An incredible McLaren decision to not pit either driver under an early safety car has seen Max Verstappen win the Qatar Grand Prix and set up a three-way title showdown in Abu Dhabi.
Oscar Piastri finished the race second to extend his winless drought, while Lando Norris had to pass Kimi Antonelli on the final lap to save fourth.
It leaves Norris as the championship leader on 408 points, but now only 12 points ahead of Verstappen, and 16 ahead of Piastri who has slipped to third.
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An incident on Lap 7 brought out the safety car and saw Verstappen dive for the pits, while McLaren didn’t give up track position and kept its drivers out.
It swiftly became clear it was the wrong call with Verstappen set up for the race win due to the cheap pit stop — he ended up winning comfortably by more than seven seconds.
There was a suggestion during the race that McLaren was frozen by inaction, afraid by appearing to favour one driver over the other in the event that the safety car only lasted long enough to pit one driver.
“I would have brought at least one in but that’s easy for me to say from my position here,” Williams team boss James Vowles said when asked on Sky Sports.
Martin Brundle said: “This has worked out horribly for McLaren. Those behind have pitted and they have not.
“It feels to me as though McLaren have missed a trick.”
Piastri wins Qatar sprint race | 02:33
Norris called out his team over the decision, saying over team radio: “We should have just followed him in, no? If we knew the car ahead was staying out.”
Piastri gave less away, but two interreactions later in the race as he tried to haul back the lead from Verstappen, and after the chequered flag, were telling.
Told he needed to be lapping in the 1:22s, which was a whole second quicker than he was lapping, he offered a sarcastic response.
“Well … nice.”
At the end of the race, he said: “Speechless.. I don’t have any words.”
The drama didn’t end there.
There was a claim from Max Verstappen’s engineer Gianpiero Lambiase at the end of the race that Antonelli appeared to “pull over and let Norris through” — the suggestion being that Mercedes would prefer a McLaren driver to win than its bitter rival.
Meanwhile, Sky Sports reporter Ted Kravitz noted that after the race that the McLaren garage appeared “shell-shocked”.
“Normally at the end of these races I speak to Andrea Stella or Zak Brown quite quickly,” he said.
“They are shell-shocked down here at McLaren. They don’t know what to say, they have gone down to the back of the garage.
“They said no interviews until after the podium. They need to go and understand, get their ducks in a row, and explain this all away.”
MORE TO COME
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