2025 McLaren F1 Team

[BMMR61]

I understand your point and it's fair but, in that case, Mclaren can never ask Piastri to move over like last year otherwise it would just prove my point. I feel they are needlessly trapping themselves. Stella said the team comes first but they can no longer implement that without looking like hypocrites. The team did not come first in Japan for some reason... They now have to hold themselves to the fact that if Piastri cannot be granted a team order in his favor in this kind of situation, then Norris can never benefit either. This ultimately just hurts the team result.

I don't think they will now, and apparently his new contract may say something about when he can be expected to move, but this may well be conjecture. His new contract elevates him anyway to the same or similar level to Lando and I suspect we'll see Stella talking later in the season about the difficulties of handling two number ones.

The only issue I had with the handling of the drivers was with the pit strategy, which felt more like they were trying not to advantage one driver or another rather than going for the win.

But I get your opinion and time will tell how it pans out. Ultimately the drivers have no right to blame anyone but themselves. The car can clearly be driven fast at every corner , it's the drivers that have issues, not the car. It's peaky when driven a way it doesn't like, it seems, but that's not saying that it isn't consistent in how it needs to be driven because whilst it is peaky in the hairpin for Lando, it isn't for Oscar. And where Lando was good in T2, Oscar not so much.

If Lando says any more about the car being tricky, they should get Daniel Ricciardo in to ask if he feels sorry for him.

He needs to stop with the immature and unhelpful media remarks and just focus on the track because blaming the car is fooling no one.

Reasonable synopsis in combined views I feel.
A question though, do any of you feel that OP essentially wasted his tyres in close contact with LN during first stint, and tucked up behind him ?
It looks like he was trying to force the pace or internal team decision (and why not in reality) but was that clumsy and do you think he would have had more "productive" application by keeping back a little to conserve, he knowing when McL stop was likely, to then close in those laps just prior, then clean air for perhaps 3 balls out to see what he could get.

It just looked like he capped his own track and tyre position to give no option as even a possibility around pit window.

In other words, was he focused on LN and not on MV to his potential detriment ?

I thought (in real time) that Oscar was pressing too hard in terms of how close he was following. I wonder if his motives were to show the team that he had more pace to fight with even then. He is in a tricky position, not at all calamitous, with the points. He can't afford to let Lando accumulate a dominant points advantage else the team orders will come into play at some point. The other point is that he may figure he has an early advantage (first 3 races) where the car is possibly more with him than Lando, but that may change with updates to address the unpredictable nature of the 39.

I'm slightly more biased to OP's side but I am fully of the opinion that it wouldn't have been right, or effective to have swapped the drivers and the risk of unsettling a potentially quite volatile team was obvious. It seems that the better McLaren, and Lando do the more grumbling happens in the media and the fan base. We have a very good car but not a dominant car, the Ferrari is a little ways back but Mercedes is solid and less than 0.2 off in qualifying on average. Russell is doing a real good job and the kid looks like he will be the next Oscar Piastri within a year. Max can not be underestimated so it will only take a difficult weekend for McLaren to struggle to even get on the podium. This is not a season of 1-2s unless some really solid updates swing it our way.

[mwillems]

It's possible that his strength and weakness is that he focusses on the next challenge right in front of him.

Was it the wrong thing to do in this situation? Possibly not, but it's hard to say. He knows that to earn the right to make his own calls he need to be in front of Lando. Lando maintained a 2 second gap to Max and was able to then slightly close the gap, lap by lap, as Max' tyres started to go off. Oscar was pushing Lando hard but couldn't do anything on the Meds. And being a very flowing track it's also hard to follow closely so the dirty air would have been hurting the mediums. But what were his options? Sit back and hope the team will send him long? It was never going to happen I don't think and I imagine that the team had already told him what the strategy would be and he drove accordingly.

You'd need to know if Lando was leaving the gap to Max intentionally and if he knew that Oscar couldn't get close enough or whether that was all the pace Lando had. If you look at the laptimes, you feel like he was pushing as much as he felt he could without hurting the tyres too much, because Lando's stop was in part going to be based on how long others went. if he did have more pace in the tank then the real place to direct your questions is once more at the pit strategy. I strongly believe that he had more time and that Lando would have gained more time by staying out another lap.

For me, thats the core of their dilemma.

They clearly state that advantage can be had by having two car in the fight (rightly to take advantage with second RB back away) but then fail to act upon it. MV doesn't need more than a sniff of that win or the WDC to get both hands on it. It seems niave to me that McL team are tying their own hands in these decisions, effectively working for the opposition.

Some drivers would be emphatic if they wanted to go long, and stuff the impact. They'll remember these races at year end IF they didn't fulfill both championship goals.

Entirely agreed. I feel they should have forced Max's hand by pitting Oscar earlier and making a call on Lando later.

Reading RaceFans this morning, they also see the possibility that when in clean air Lando had a quite real possibility of beating Max' hard times. I'll grant it isn't the most obvious outcome, but since there was likely no other way to get past Max and that 2nd and 3rd wasn't really in doubt, it's odd that it wasn't attempted.

Like I said yesterday, it felt as if they were ensuring no Mclaren driver got an advantage over the other, rather than focussing on getting the best positioned Mclaren driver the best chance of a win, which is what Lando had earned in my view.

https://www.racefans.net/2025/04/06/did ... -analysed/

"Even so, it says something about McLaren’s priorities that they were more geared up to protect Piastri’s third place than they were to use their best-placed driver to attack for the lead. After all, if they had got Norris into the lead but Piastri had fallen to fourth behind Charles Leclerc, that would have been a net gain of four points for the team."

[geogate]

ho hum, that one was lost on the saturday. But to be fair, Max risked everything to get that lap, and i think where our car & drivers are, they shouldnt be doing that. Fair and deserved win for Max. Mclaren did let that one get away, but I think they approached it in a sensible way.
Had there been any clear air to pit either driver into, they surely would have, but there wasnt.
Oscar appeared to be the faster driver overall, but he has to do it on Saturday.
A quite poor first sector on Saturday lost Oscar the race

[Farnborough]

In essence, what I'm asking is .... IF the team get to the end of year without the WDC, then could they honestly sit down and be happy with having applied a "sensible" approach ?

They've not done that with car, pushing all margin to limits in searching for advantage and that which I appluad. I love watching innovation in THOUGHT and how thats applied to design and execution in this very competitive field. A very effective and thorough build to season technically, with justly rewarded on track performance.

It would appear very bland/staid/conventional in their application to really getting stuck in to racing. It's not specifically criticism from me in that process, much more that one adventurous performance is in contrast to the other.

[Watto]

Towards the end I guess the only thing I could think they could have done would be give Oscar the chance to attack Max- I don’t feel they had the advantage here to make it but could have tried if he couldn’t switch back as Lando obviously qualified better. I am fine mostly with them saying Lando gets the preference. The concern I have is depending if red bull can figure out their car- having Lando and Oscar sharing points probably keeps him within sight of max if red bull can nail some car updates.

Max was near faultless all weekend though from quali onwards

[mwillems]

In essence, what I'm asking is .... IF the team get to the end of year without the WDC, then could they honestly sit down and be happy with having applied a "sensible" approach ?

They've not done that with car, pushing all margin to limits in searching for advantage and that which I appluad. I love watching innovation in THOUGHT and how thats applied to design and execution in this very competitive field. A very effective and thorough build to season technically, with justly rewarded on track performance.

It would appear very bland/staid/conventional in their application to really getting stuck in to racing. It's not specifically criticism from me in that process, much more that one adventurous performance is in contrast to the other.

Yeah my reply was along the same lines, just not explicitly. They cannot look at it as if it is only an internal fight. Whomever is based placed to finish ahead of other teams should be supported in that approach. For me, Lando earned that, and the dice should have been rolled.

But it's obviously too early to pick a driver and rolling the dice doesn't mean that had Lando got the win that Oscar wouldn't be the one to be favoured in the next race if the same circumstances came up. So it's isn't putting a focus on a driver still, but it does help by ensuring that one of the drivers can hinder their main opposition.

[basti313]

Towards the end I guess the only thing I could think they could have done would be give Oscar the chance to attack Max-

The question is, where would this have been sensitive to do? They stopped on lap 21 of 53. It took at least some 15 laps to see the tire development and get a glimpse that Lando will not be able to pass.
Albeit I did not see much tendency by Oscar, that he is genuinely faster (he dropped back and got closer with not much of a pace different to the variation the front had), it would have been at maximum something like lap 40 to switch.
At this point the gap with an overtake (full lift, 1.5-2sec loss by Lando) would have been in the 3sec range to Max. With maybe a pace difference of 0.3 sec...so most of the rest of the race just to close the gap?

No, there was not much sense in the swap. The issue was strategy. Stop one car at lap 18, one at 25. Not this boring nonsense they did.

[Jurgen von Diaz]

Why didn't Norris overcut Verstappen? Papaya rules going into goofy mode; they had to protect Norris from his teammate. They gave the victory to Max so their drivers won't be sad if a teammate wins.

Because the team thought it would be slower. It may also have risked him losing a place to a potential title rival.

Sometimes I wonder if Ferrari and McLaren hire their strategy team's staff from the same place.

[bauc]

[Ben1980]

I'm not sure going long would work. The hard tyres were faster and the lack of degradation made no offset options. The only real option was to pit Lando instead of Oscar.

I know they tried the dummy early stop, but Horner knew that was no chance due to traffic.

It was just a race with little options. Sometimes they fastest option is just that.

[mwillems]

I'm not sure going long would work. The hard tyres were faster and the lack of degradation made no offset options. The only real option was to pit Lando instead of Oscar.

I know they tried the dummy early stop, but Horner knew that was no chance due to traffic.

It was just a race with little options. Sometimes they fastest option is just that.

Lando's end laps in dirty air were .4 off his exit laps.



With clean air, the question is, would he have been quicker? It's by no means a foregone conclusion that he wouldn't have been quicker and the idea that his first lap on hards was much faster than what he could do on mediums is clearly false. But no matter what happened, he wasn't losing 2nd so why wouldn't you try.

Edit: And it isn't clear that his last lap was slower than the previous one because of tyres or because when he got that close to Max that the dirty air caused issues. To me it is the latter. His lap before the one I quotes was 2 tenths away from his first hard laps.

[venkyhere]

With clean air, the question is, would he have been quicker? It's by no means a foregone conclusion that he wouldn't have been quicker and the idea that his first lap on hards was much faster than what he could do on mediums is clearly false. But no matter what happened, he wasn't losing 2nd so why wouldn't you try.

100% agree.
It never seemed to me that Norris was 'trying' to close up to Verstappen to overtake. It looked as if he was happy with 2nd and was more concerned about Piastri behind. The gap to verstappen was a ping pong ball game, with both cars alternating their 'recharge' laps with 'deployment' laps. I am damn sure that the Mclaren had more pace in it, yet Norris never looked (from the body language of the cars) like he wanted to even get to within the DRS window - yes, Max was pulling ahead 'whenever required' , but couldn't Norris have tried some clever (risking tyre wear) lines at the chicane exit or deployment button usage, to attack properly on the pit straight ? Never saw that. McLaren (and by extension Norris) are too afraid of DNF and want to play it conservatively. Looked like Norris was more worried about losing points to Piastri than about losing points to Verstappen (because he knows his closest contender is Piastri in the faster machine over the entire season). But it speaks volumes about the lack of 'doing anything to win' mentality.

I agree the car did not have the 0.8+ advantage to 'comfortably overtake' Redbull ; but is their racing mentality limited to attempting an overtake only if they have the theoretical 'laptime in hand' ? What about some old-school 'sending it' ? This 'playing it safe, not taking risk' mentality will make winning the WDC way harder than it supposed to, I am afraid.

[basti313]

I'm not sure going long would work. The hard tyres were faster and the lack of degradation made no offset options. The only real option was to pit Lando instead of Oscar.

The point would simply have been to pressurize RedBull to an earlier stop. We have seen it on Russel, he had a very good outlap, so pushing was possible.

I know they tried the dummy early stop, but Horner knew that was no chance due to traffic.

I do not see that. Piastri had a nice gap before Alonso to pit into and the pace was there to use it. We saw that he lost 2sec to Russel who pitted one lap earlier. That would have put RedBull into the position of a need to pit.

I also do not see why the overcut should not work. We saw some 33 low and a 32 high by Norris on the inlap. After the stop Verstappen did 32 mids at best. So with clean air, I can not see a time loss above 2-3 sec by staying our for another 6 or 7 laps.
6 or 7 laps brings us to a tire delta of around 0.3sec per lap. With a remaining 20laps to go for me this is a no brainer to go with an overcut and not to follow Max into the pits.

An "opposite Verstappen" call would in any case be the right thing to so here. It is just blocked by them managing the intra team battle.

[Waz]

There's nowhere at Suzuka to really "send it" and Max is too good in defence to give up the lead without a serious fight.

Some times 2nd and 3rd will be the best possible, no shame in that. It's a nice problem to have.

As a team, McLaren will aim for the WCC first and let their drivers battle fairly for the WDC. It risks Max sneaking in at the end, but it genuinely looks like podiums will be tough for him to get as regularly as McLaren should.

[Farnborough]

Theres much information proffered here in support of what they did for that outcome. Thats, ultimately, just reading what happened though.

It's the task of McL team and strategic arsenal to specifically "short circuit " that status quo in their plans, those to match the output of their technical team in accomplishments.

It was ordinary thinking giving ordinary output in reality.

They state the advantage of two against one and fail to action that.

They need to think more Ross Brawn and that ilk in their outlook.