McLaren once again showed its inexperience in decision-making at the Japanese GP when Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri found themselves in a position of superiority to steal the victory from Max Verstappen.
The Woking team made a serious strategic mistake that prevented them from attacking the Red Bull driver in the pits.
How McLaren lost the Japanese GP
After a high-degradation race in 2024, the resurfacing and low track temperatures this season made the Japanese Grand Prix very uneventful, with just one pit stop for the vast majority of drivers.
Max Verstappen defended pole at the start despite a very good launch from Norris on the ‘dirty’ side of the grid, which also had a wet lane from the morning rain in Suzuka. However, all drivers maintained their positions except Fernando Alonso, who took P11 from Pierre Gasly, and Nico Hülkenberg, who took P15 from Carlos Sainz.
From there, the race was a monologue. Not just in the fight between Verstappen and McLaren, but also in the rest of the field. Even so, the uncertainty of a potential pit lane attack from the papaya team kept the race slightly interesting, seeing that Norris and Piastri’s pace was solid and Max couldn’t open a significant gap.
McLaren ‘threatened’ an undercut on Verstappen with a pace change on lap 19. Will Joseph, Norris’ race engineer, told him the plan in the middle of Sector 2. Obviously, it was a ‘fake’ call to make Red Bull bite the bait, have Max come out in traffic, and allow the papaya team to complete an overcut with both drivers.
But the Milton Keynes team didn’t fall for the trap because it was too obvious. An ‘opposite’ to the driver you are going to attack is always a last-minute call, it’s never done in the middle of Sector 2 even though there was a clear pace change — because this plan, executed in these words, had surely been studied in advance.
Seeing that they had exposed their tactic with Norris to Red Bull, the threat of an undercut from George Russell, and the pit window still placing the front runners in a zone with some traffic, McLaren decided to cover Piastri from Russell and at the same time launch an attack for victory with the Australian at the end of lap 20 instead of doing it with Norris. By doing this, clearly, the attack also turned into an attack on themselves.
In this way, to avoid an internal war that could interfere with their drivers’ focus on chasing Verstappen, McLaren was forced to pit Norris the following lap, just like the Red Bull driver did to cover from Piastri’s undercut.
Piastri’s undercut would have been successful if the pit stops of Norris and Verstappen had been delayed one more lap, as just in Sector 2 of his outlap, the new hard tyre was already six-tenths faster than the used medium.
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Could McLaren have done something different?
Without a doubt, the clearest option in hindsight — and the classic strategy in this case with two teammates chasing another rival — is to try the undercut with the better-placed driver, in this case Norris, and keep Piastri out for at least one more lap. Furthermore, Piastri wouldn’t have lost position to Russell and would have maintained P3 if they had followed this strategy.
While it’s true the new hard tyre proved very fast in the last two sectors, in Piastri’s outlap it was noticeable that the first sector—while the tyre was still out of its optimal working temperature—lost time.
In other words, even with a Norris attack, the undercut on Verstappen was by no means a guaranteed position for the British driver.
Despite McLaren’s impressive pace changes, the Red Bull driver always had some extra performance in reserve to counter undercut threats. But without a doubt, an attack from Norris would have given him a shot at victory.
Instead, the papaya team chose to accept defeat—or rather, settle for a ‘non-victory’—and hoped the MCL39’s race pace could take on Max. That didn’t happen.
Should McLaren have done a driver swap?
The data says yes. It wouldn’t have been the first time McLaren tried a swap, and they could have reversed the positions at the end of the race without any threat. Trying something different in search of victory with nothing to lose is always something positive.
It’s worth noting that at no point did McLaren forbid Piastri from attacking Norris. They were ‘free to race’. But of course, to what extent is a smart driver like Piastri willing to attack his teammate on track and risk a double podium? He did it in Italy in 2024, it’s true, but that was on Lap 1 and in a direct fight for the win at the time.
Piastri had DRS to attack Norris in the final 16 laps of the race and couldn’t put him in danger. Norris had only one chance to open DRS on Verstappen in the whole race. It would’ve been worth doing the ‘swap’ to see if Piastri could at least get into that DRS window for a few laps and put the Red Bull driver under pressure — who once again was flawless, as he was in qualifying.
Verstappen was the driver with the best race pace on the medium tyre. Piastri was a little worse in this stint compared to the Dutchman and Lando.
On the other hand, with the hard tyre, McLaren had more pace. Especially Piastri, who perhaps couldn’t unlock that extra performance he claimed to have over the radio because the pit wall didn’t give him clean air to go after Max. But again, as mentioned earlier, he wasn’t prevented from attacking his teammate either.
Total control from Verstappen and dominance from start to finish to get within just one point of Norris in the Drivers’ Championship.
There’s no doubt that without the magnificent pole, the win would’ve been much harder for Verstappen, but the Dutch driver is the one who makes the difference at the key moment—and that’s what makes him the best driver on the grid right now, no debate.
Despite this extremely conservative mentality, the truth is that in the Constructors’ Championship, McLaren is lucky to only be competing against Verstappen—who continues to be the only driver scoring points for Red Bull in the first three races.
Therefore, in this aspect, McLaren has a solid excuse to justify not wanting to be more aggressive with their decision-making. Keeping peace between their drivers and scoring good points for their collective interest.
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AloJapan.com