McLaren didn’t expect rivals to pit under safety car in Qatar GP strategy error

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella says his squad “didn’t expect” everyone else to pit under an early safety car as it lost a likely Qatar Grand Prix win to Max Verstappen and Red Bull, and handed the Dutchman a lifeline for a fifth Formula 1 world title.

McLaren’s polesitter Oscar Piastri was leading the race from Verstappen and Lando Norris when a collision between Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly caused an early safety car.

It gave the field an opportunity to pit by lap 7 and with it a chance for everyone to make it to the end on one more pitstop, with Pirelli having mandated a maximum tyre stint of 25-laps due to puncture concerns.

But while Verstappen and nearly the entire train of cars behind him pitted, Piastri and Norris both stayed out, gifting the Red Bull driver a pitstop worth around 26 seconds at the cost of just a single spot on track, with Verstappen taking the restart in third.

McLaren did prove faster than Verstappen, but not by nearly enough to undo its strategy mistake, with Verstappen easily cruising to his 70th grand prix win. Piastri was second while Norris only managed fourth, meaning the latter will now go to Abu Dhabi with just a 12-point lead on Verstappen.

Explaining the decision not to pit under the safety car, Stella told Sky Sports F1: “We didn’t expect everyone else to pit. Obviously if everyone else behind you pits, then it makes pitting definitely the right thing to do.

“When you are the lead car, you don’t know exactly what the others are going to do. There could have been a loss for Lando in case we were pitting both cars with the double stack. But effectively the main reason was related to not expecting everyone else to pit. So, it was a decision but as a matter of fact, it wasn’t the correct decision.

“Definitely not the outcome we wanted and something to review. As usual, we will learn from racing and we will get stronger for the next event, which obviously becomes now decisive and even more important.”

Piastri and Norris could still have rescued the race with McLaren’s superior pace, or in case of another safety car, but Stella says excessive tyre degradation meant Verstappen’s lead was never under significant threat.

“Any other safety car would have put us in a very strong position. That’s the flexibility that Will [Joseph, Norris’ race engineer] was referring to,” Stella added. “For all the others pitting at lap 7, their strategy was kind of prescribed 7-32-57 but as a matter of fact, it worked very well for everyone.

“We thought that the pace in the car also could have allowed us to open enough of a gap, but there was a much higher degradation and therefore we couldn’t exploit the pace of the car entirely.”

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– The Autosport.com Team