‘Baffled’ F1 presenter gives scathing McLaren verdict in ‘throw it away’ F1 2024 title warning
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have been close on track on several occasions this season.
F1 presenter, journalist and author Will Buxton said McLaren not swapping their drivers at Monza “baffles me”, in a lengthy questioning of the team’s tactics.
Oscar Piastri passed Lando Norris on the first lap of the Italian Grand Prix with a daring move at the Variante della Roggia on Sunday, eventually going on to finish second ahead of his team-mate as Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc executed a one-stop strategy to take a superb victory.
Will Buxton gives McLaren verdict: ‘They’ve got to be smarter’
Debate has continued since the chequered flag fell about whether McLaren should fully back Norris in the World Championship fight against Max Verstappen, who remains 62 points in front with eight races to go in a comparatively struggling Red Bull.
For his part, however, Piastri has not given up on his own hopes of fighting for the Drivers’ title – though at 106 points behind top spot, he would need a significant turnaround if he were to mount a championship challenge at this stage.
With Norris having a smaller deficit, Buxton joined the calls for McLaren to have already put their backing behind the driver with more points, saying the team has “got to be smarter” in how it goes about trying to reel in Verstappen and Red Bull.
“It just doesn’t make sense to me that you allow your drivers to fight,” Buxton said on F1 TV.
“Did Oscar pull off one of the moves of the season? 100 per cent. My word, that was a gutsy, brilliantly executed move. But how are McLaren allowing their drivers to be in a situation where they’re fighting each other?
“If you’ve got a one-two in the race, you’re protecting that one-two because you’re looking at the Constructors’ points that you want to bring in, and you then have to decide which of your drivers is more likely to win the World Championship with nine races to go.
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“They have the fastest car. Red Bull were on the back foot this weekend, were not looking strong for a podium, and as it turned out, didn’t even get a top five finish today.
“How are you not prioritising the guy who’s going to make the most out of this? How do you not even swap them on the last lap just to get a couple more points? Because you’re not talking about giving away victory at this point, it’s a second place.
“Does it matter in the overall scheme of things? No, you’re still bringing home the same number of points for McLaren. And this has nothing to do with my nationality, being British, I just want to see a championship fight.
“I don’t understand what McLaren are doing. I genuinely don’t, and I haven’t now for months, because none of it makes sense.
“The only thing that makes sense is that Oscar’s contract, maybe somewhere in it says that he has to have number one, and this is why Zak [Brown] keeps on saying ‘we’ve got two number one drivers.’
“Mark Webber’s his manager, and Mark, very famously, didn’t like having the number two status at Red Bull. Maybe there’s something in the contract that says they have to be on equal footing all the time. But surely, then there’d be a caveat in there that says, ‘Listen, unless we’re in a championship position’, but you can’t wait until it’s mathematically impossible for Oscar to win the championship.
“You have to be sensible. You have to be smart, and they’re not being smart.
“It baffles me, because they’re going to throw it away – and you don’t get these chances every year. You don’t know when your next opportunity is going to come around, and they’re going to throw it away, and they’ll deserve to at the moment, because they’re just not playing it smart.
“And with Ferrari on the pace that they had today, being close in the Constructors’ as well, there’s no guarantee McLaren are going to walk away [winning].
“They’ve got to be smarter, and we’ve been saying this for months. I don’t know how many more times we can keep saying it, because you can see for Lando, he was driving angry.
“The mistakes he was making, overdriving the car, hitting the bollard on the way into the pits. That’s a guy there who thinks he’s been done over at the start of the race and thinking, ‘Why has this happened? How has this happened?’ You know, they’re going to throw it all away.”
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