For McLaren, it has been a horror movie these past two races with the double disqualification in Las Vegas when their underfloors were measured to be the thickness of a piece of paper too heavily worn compared to the technical regulations, but there can’t be any grey areas on this kind thing and they were illegal.
A week later in Qatar you really couldn’t have made it up any more dramatically. This smooth, fast track means the drivers are flat out for 70 per cent of the lap and, particularly from Turns 12 to 15, where the cars are carrying enormous speeds and aerodynamic loads, placing heavy demands on the tyres. This track has seen tyre failures before.
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Pirelli are the sole tyre supplier and they have a duty of care on the safety of all concerned, but also, given they are guaranteed to win every race and the championship, the last thing a tyre supplier needs is for their product to fail in a spectacular and very public way.
Therefore minimum allowable tyre pressures, which play a key role in the integrity of the construction, were set very high for an F1 car at 29 psi front and 24.5 psi rear, but much more significantly no tyre could be used for more than 25 laps otherwise an effective 30 second penalty would be applied.
In a 57-lap race this meant the earliest pit stop for any driver would be Lap 7 leaving 2 x 25 laps to the end of the race to sneak under the rules.
McLaren pay heavy price for gamble
All we heard pre-race was that the two key laps were 7 and 32 for stops. As Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly made significant contact on the exit of turn one and Hulkenberg was stranded, the Safety Car was rightly called into action, you guessed it, on Lap 7.
This meant the remaining cars could legally all pit and make it to the end, albeit having to stretch their remaining two sets of tyres right up to the 25-lap limit. The problem was with so many cars in the pit lane at the same time, and often with both cars in several teams being quite close together, getting two cars serviced from one pit stop position for each team, and then safely within the regulations fed back into the fast lane and onto the track was quite the challenge.
The McLaren strategists elected not to pit Oscar Piastri from the lead and Lando Norris from third place and to keep flexibility on tyre decision rather than being locked into two 25-lap stints. This was a grave error because hardly anyone else did that, and Piastri had such a lead already that he would have comfortably pitted and exited in the lead without holding Norris up too much while he waited for service.
The Safety Car soon picked up the leaders and, by the end of the next lap, Max Verstappen and the rest of the pack were back on the tails of the McLaren with effectively a free pitstop in under their belts which is worth a significant 26 seconds on this layout.
McLaren had gambled on three things out of their control, and they paid a heavy price. Firstly, that others would do the same thing in staying out and Verstappen would have to negotiate traffic for a while on the restart, secondly that flexibility on their tyres would pay dividends later in the race not least if there was another Safety Car, and in any event pitting with a much less congested pit lane. Thirdly, that they would have much fresher and faster tyres in the closing stages to usurp a struggling Verstappen on his long-stinted tyres. None of them played out.
Andrea Stella confirmed it was a conscious decision and not a fumble or indecision, and it doesn’t appear to have been about simply being fair to both drivers in their championship chances. Pitting both would have fixed that anyway even if Norris lost a bit of time and a couple of places at that point, but that’s the cost of not being faster than Piastri on the night.
I feel most for Piastri, he was sublime all weekend and clearly the fastest combination on track with two pole positions, an easy Sprint victory, and comfortably the fastest in the main race. He managed to close 18 seconds on Verstappen of the 26 initially given away, but he was therefore still eight seconds shy at the flag.
Max makes most of Norris’ scruffy weekend
Max had delivered yet another masterpiece of a drive to make the most of the McLaren gift and kept himself very much in play for the championship showdown in Abu Dhabi this coming weekend.
Norris had a scruffy weekend on a track that he’s not always gelled with. He missed his final qualifying lap in both sessions due to track position and then a mistake which left him challenged on the grids. From the less used right-hand side of the front row of the grid in the main race, third place man Verstappen was virtually guaranteed to beat him to turn one and did so.
Norris made a number of errors here and there and his lack of pace compared with Piastri, seemingly at a loss as to how to solve that at the controls judging by his radio calls, which ensured after his second stop he would be behind Carlos Sainz and Kimi Antonelli on the road and with some overtaking to do.
Piastri had sailed past Antonelli’s Mercedes earlier in the race with a confidence and commitment fully reminiscent of earlier in the season before he had half dozen races in the wilderness by comparison.
But Norris couldn’t find a way past in the closing stages until Antonelli ran wide on the penultimate lap and gifted him what could be a critical fourth place by Sunday evening. Bizarrely, Red Bull publicly suggested that was intentional in order to let Norris score more points, which they have had to formally retract.
Quite why Red Bull would think Mercedes, who they are fighting with for second place in the Constructors’ Championship, would give away points to their dominant customer team McLaren, or anybody else for that matter, I really don’t know.
Sainz’s popular podium and miserable weekend for Ferrari
That left Carlos Sainz in the final podium position which was extremely popular for him and his Williams team. As we’ve seen through his F1 career, when Sainz is offered a golden opportunity, he grits his teeth and makes the most of it, he never gives up. It’s his second podium in seven races and well deserved as the team pitted him on Lap 7 and fed him precisely back into the fast lane through the melee.
That will be salt in the wounds for Williams team-mate Alex Albon who has had a frustrating time and is pointless in those same seven races.
Ferrari had a miserable weekend which team boss Fred Vasseur has attributed to the very high tyre pressures mentioned earlier. They lacked rear grip and general handling balance and are now confined to fourth in the Constructors’ championship behind McLaren, Mercedes, and Red Bull.
Charles Leclerc appeared to be fighting his car every corner of every lap to secure eighth place and Lewis Hamilton looked equally challenged and too had many adventures for an anonymous 12th place. It’s very difficult times for the Scuderia and particularly Lewis, who can only hope now that Ferrari do a great job on the massive 2026 regulation changes if he’s going to add to any of the statistic tables in a positive way.
Antonelli is just two points behind Hamilton in the championship, the man he replaced at Mercedes, and despite nine races in the wilderness it will sum up Lewis’s year if the Italian teenager beats him to sixth in the championship.
Norris still favourite for the title
On the grid Max told me he was very chilled and doesn’t get nervous at all these days. Post race he told me that he doesn’t care about the championship. That’s simply mind games aimed at the McLaren boys. In a sit-down interview earlier in the week he said that his red mist clash with George Russell back in Barcelona, for which he received a penalty which cost him a crucial 11 points, was because he cares so much.
We know how vociferous Max gets with his team when the car is not right, or with other drivers or circumstances on track, he’s a hard wired winning machine that way and that’s because he really wants this championship badly, it will be one of his finest, if not the best one yet.
Norris still has the 12 points advantage, and with the best car on the track, and driving for the team which has dominated this championship, if they can all stay calm and methodically, almost boringly, deliver a standard Grand Prix, he should take it.
I’m going to feel sad to an extent on Sunday evening, because two drivers who deserve a World Championship this season are going to miss out. May the best driver with the calmest head win. Don’t miss this final race.
MB
The 2025 Formula 1 season concludes with the title-deciding Abu Dhabi Grand Prix live on Sky Sports F1 from Friday. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime
