How Piastri was dudded in veiled team orders as podium detail exposes McLaren farce

Every grand prix features four people on the podium. Joining the three podium-getting drivers is a representative of the winning team, who collects a trophy on behalf of the constructor.

Red Bull Racing sent Hannah Schmitz, principal strategy engineer, to the rostrum in Qatar.

It was impossible not to read that as a little provocation — the opening of hostilities for this weekend’s title decider in Abu Dhabi.

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Max Verstappen won the Qatar Grand Prix when Schmitz made the call to stop him for his first tyre change on lap 7 and McLaren elected not to pit.

It was the winning move.

Or, given every other team made the same call, it was the losing move from McLaren.

Verstappen said ahead of the weekend that he was only in with a shot of the title because of McLaren’s mistakes.

“Another one!” he enthused to Sky Sports after closing the gap to title leader Lando Norris to just 12 points, moving up to second in the championship.

McLaren’s strategic howler piles real pressure onto the team to close the drivers title at this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

But with Piastri dropping to third in the championship and trailing Norris by 16 points despite a dominant weekend, the Australian is the one who’s bearing the brunt of the mistake.

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WHAT HAPPENED?

The Qatar Grand Prix was Piastri’s return to form, as though the last four races had never even happened. Sprint pole led to a dominant sprint victory, and he eased to pole position for the grand prix to foreshadow much of the same in the feature race on Sunday.

The start of the grand prix went exactly to plan: a perfect start while Norris got an average one, allowing Verstappen to sweep through to second place.

With Norris a step behind in pace all weekend, it was the ideal scenario and would have seen Piastri cut his deficit to 12 points. Verstappen also would have remained in mathematical contention.

McLaren’s strategic blunder, however, flipped that on its head.

The race hinged on lap 7, when Nico Hülkenberg and Pierre Gasly tangled at the first turn and triggered a safety car.

It was the earliest possible moment in the 57-lap race that a driver could pit for a two-top strategy under Pirelli’s 25-lap limit on tyre life, with the second stop then locked in for lap 32.

Only three drivers stayed out: Piastri, Norris and Esteban Ocon, who had to serve a five-second penalty and pitted on the following lap.

It had the effect of giving everyone a free first pit stop relative to McLaren at a track featuring one of the longest pit-loss times of the season.

Norris immediately queried the decision and was told the team preferred to keep its strategic options open rather than lock itself into having to stop again on lap 32.

The logic is understandable, but only to an extent.

For McLaren to be proved right, it would have needed a second safety car to interrupt the race either before lap 25 or in the narrow window after lap 32 but before the McLaren drivers taking their second stops.

And the presumption that another safety car would have forced other drivers into a three-stop race ignored the difficulty overtaking even with newer tyres — consider Norris struggling to pass Andrea Kimi Antonelli late in the race despite having 12-lap-fresher rubber.

Unsurprisingly — at least in the opinion on nine of the 10 teams — that scenario did not come to pass.

McLaren engineered a two-four finish from what should have been a nailed-on victory and double podium.

“Speechless,” Piastri said after taking the chequered flag. “I don’t have any words.”

WHY DIDN’T McLAREN PIT?

To be fair to McLaren, sometimes even obvious calls are hard to make from the lead. The leader takes all the strategic risk.

Had Piastri taken the opportunity to pit, Verstappen could well have taken the opposite view and taken the lead, from where he might have had the chance to control the race had circumstances worked in his favour.

But there was a second reason that played a role beyond simple strategic risk.

If the team chose to pit, it would have had to have pitted both drivers to keep things fair.

That would have meant stacking Norris behind Piastri, which would have cost the Englishman time — he was only 4.5 seconds behind the Australian before the safety car.

Worse, though, is that McLaren was positioned at the start of the pit lane, near the entrance. That would have risked Norris’s exit being delayed by the stream of cars entering the lane.

Given the whole field stopped, it would have been a considerable time loss that could have amounted to several places.

Stopping Norris on the following lap wouldn’t have been an option, and splitting strategies around the safety car would have been actively disadvantaging one of its drivers — probably but not certainly Norris — at a crucial moment in the title fight.

“That could have been a loss for Lando in pitting in case we were pitting both cars in the double stack,” McLaren principal Andrea Stella told Sky Sports.

“But effectively the main reason was related to not expecting everyone else to pit. It was decision, but as a matter of fact it wasn’t the correct decision.

“We thought that the pace in the car could have allowed us anyhow to open enough of a gap, but there wasn’t much tyre degradation, and therefore we couldn’t exploit entirely the pace of the car. Not the desired outcome.”

Ordinarily a driver in Piastri’s position — pole position and in the lead of the race — would get strategic priority. Sometimes races unfold messily, and sometimes that means the second driver loses out more than they ordinarily would.

Piastri, as clearly McLaren’s quicker driver this weekend, might have thought he was entitled to that privilege, particularly he was the team’s only shot at victory.

Instead the decision was made to disadvantage both drivers to avoid the risk of hurting only one of them, in the process costing the team — costing Piastri — the win.

Just when he’d finally broken his run of bad form and painful misfortune, Piastri was dealt another kick in the guts.

“I haven’t spoken to anyone, but I’m feeling pretty crap, as you can imagine,” he told Sky Sports. “I don’t really know what to say.

“I think the pace was very strong, I didn’t put a foot wrong. It’s just a shame to not walk away with the win.”

British television asked after the race whether McLaren must now prioritise Norris in Abu Dhabi given the looming threat of Verstappen to the championship double.

Piastri must surely feel as though in Qatar, even if inadvertently, the team already did.

NORRIS DOESN’T LOSE

While both McLaren drivers had their races negatively affected, only one of them had their championship negatively affected, and it wasn’t Norris.

Had the drivers finished in the positions they held before the safety car — and given the difficulty overtaking, that’s entirely believable — Norris’s deficit would have still been reduced to 12 points, but Piastri would have been his closest challenger. Verstappen would have been still alive but an improbable 22 points adrift.

Instead those positions have essentially been reversed. Verstappen, in sizzling form, is just 12 points behind Norris, while Piastri is a far less likely 16 points adrift.

It’s easy to understand, then, why Norris was the less frustrated of the two after the race. For him the loss was fixed so long as he followed Piastri at the safety car — he would either likely lose a place in the double stack or he would lose a place at the following pit stops, as proved to be the case.

“Not our finest day, but that’s life,” he told Sky Sports.

It was only Piastri who really had something to lose given he was playing with a race victory and a big points swing.

Norris in fact was even handed a small gift late in the race when Andrea Kimi Antonelli slithered off the road at turn 10, handing him fourth place.

What would have been leads of 10 and 14 points over Verstappen and Piastri were extended by two points apiece.

Those two points could be absolutely crucial.

Verstappen’s victory brings the Dutchman to seven wins for the season, equalling both Norris and Piastri. It means that in the event of a tie, the winner of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will claim the championship.

The difference between first and third is 10 points.

Before passing Antonelli, Norris would have had to have finished second to a victorious Verstappen in Abu Dhabi to clinch the title. Now he just needs to finish on the podium.

Given the parlous state of Ferrari, the nonentity of Red Bull Racing’s second car and Mercedes’s unpredictable form, that should be eminently achievable — Qatar was only the third time Norris saw the chequered flag outside the top three.

Norris is still in the box seat to claim the title this weekend.

VERSTAPPEN IS REVELLING IN HIS POSITION

But Verstappen, who was 104 points down on the title lead only eight races ago, cannot be discounted.

“It’s all possible now,” he said with a smile.

This is prime Verstappen territory. Having written off his hopes of defending his championship twice already, he’ll head into the finale in superb form but with none of the baggage of expectation.

And you just know both him and Red Bull Racing will revel in that position in the days between now and Sunday’s race.

The games began in fact before the Qatar weekend had even started, with the Dutchman declaring that he’d have already wrapped up the championship a long time ago had he been driving a McLaren.

“Max generally has a good clue about a lot of things, but there’s also a lot of things he doesn’t have much of a clue about,” Norris said, attempting to rebuff.

“It’s also Red Bull’s way of going about things, this kind of aggressive nature and just talking nonsense a lot of the time.”

The mind games continued with Red Bull Racing sending Schmitz onto the podium, with Verstappen ramming home the point in his post-race comments.

“When strategy maybe comes into play or making the right calls at the right time, we might have the opportunity,” he said.

Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko also lobbed a bizarre grenade, accusing Antonelli of waving Norris through at the end of the race — something Mercedes boss Toto Wolff gave short shrift.

“I mean, how brainless can you be to even say something like this,” he said.

But it all has the effect of creating noise that could be detrimental to McLaren as the season reaches its climax, in the process taking the pressure off Verstappen ahead of a weekend on which Red Bull Racing will need everything to go right.

“I’m a lot more relaxed now,” Verstappen said. “I go in there with just positive energy. I try everything I can.

“But at the same time, if I don’t win it, I still know that I had an amazing season, so it doesn’t really matter. It takes a lot of the pressure off. I’m just out there having a good time, like I had today.”

FERRARI FINISHES FOURTH, WILLIAMS FIFTH

Antonelli’s lost two points late in the race weren’t just to Norris’s favour.

Lewis Hamilton, who’s clearly counting down the days until this wretched first season with Ferrari is finished, might also breathe a small sigh of relief.

Had Antonelli kept those points, the rookie would have overtaken Hamilton for sixth place in the drivers title.

Seventh on the title table would equal Hamilton’s lowest championship finish, achieved just last year.

“I think I’m much stronger in the second half of the year,” Antonelli told Sky Sports. “It has been a definitely another story compared to the European [rounds].

“We’re fighting more and more often at the front, which is very exciting.”

Unfortunately for the seven-time champion, the dispiriting Hamilton connections don’t end there.

As he stares down the barrel of his first Formula 1 season without a podium, the man he replaced at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz, took his second podium of the season for Williams.

Sainz started seventh, had a great start to rise to fifth and then gained from the pit lane drama during the first safety car to be running fourth, which became third when Norris made his final pit stop.

The result locked Williams into fifth in the championship, up from ninth last season, which will come with a bump in prize money worth approximately $50 million.

“This surpasses our expectations,” Williams boss James Vowles told Sky Sports. “I hope it shows the world the direction that we’re on and the belief that we have in where we’re going as well.

“We’re still here to win championships — we’re a long way away from that, a long way away — but at least now the work we’re doing is starting to pay off.”

Meanwhile, Hamilton’s non-scoring race, combined with Charles Leclerc’s similarly uncompetitive eighth, means Ferrari is locked into a deeply underwhelming fourth on the championship table behind Mercedes and Red Bull Racing — and it would be behind Red Bull Racing even if you were to discount Tsunoda’s 30 points.

It leaves precious little for Ferrari fight for in the final race of season the team will be eager to see the back of.