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Laurence Edmondson
AUSTIN, Texas — For the first time this season, a McLaren driver is no longer the favorite to win the Formula 1 world championship. ESPN BET Sportsbook currently has Max Verstappen at +150, while Oscar Piastri is +175 and Lando Norris +200.
Just three races ago, Verstappen’s odds were as long as +8000, underlining the speed at which he has slashed Piastri’s lead in the drivers’ standings.
Such has been the turnaround by Red Bull and Verstappen that McLaren could be forgiven for panicking after another underwhelming weekend at the U.S. Grand Prix. But while the rest of the world is waking up to the idea of Verstappen overhauling the largest points gap in F1 history to win his fifth title, McLaren has been fully aware of the threat for several races.
“The danger for me is the same as there was in Baku,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said in Austin on Sunday evening. “I said very clearly in Baku that it was in capital letters that Max was in the contest for the drivers’ championship. And when I say something, I mean it.
“If I say it, I think it’s because of experience, it’s because of understanding the trend, understanding the circuits that we were going to face from Baku onwards. For me, there’s no mystery. We know that when Max has the material to win, he becomes a very serious candidate to win, so it doesn’t change what our understanding of the situation is.”
Identifying the threat is one thing, but combatting it is another.
Since last month’s Italian Grand Prix, Verstappen has outscored both McLaren drivers combined and cut his gap to Piastri by 64 points. Apply the same trend in results to the final five races of the season and Verstappen would beat both Piastri and Norris to this year’s title.
By exploring fruitful setup directions and adding a significant upgrade to the RB21 at the Italian Grand Prix, the Red Bull in Verstappen’s hands has become the fastest car on the grid at recent races. Combine that with McLaren’s drivers struggling to maximize the performance of their car, while also making significant errors such as Piastri’s crashes in qualifying and the race in Baku, and the gap in the standings has shrunk at a dramatic rate.
As impressive as Verstappen’s pursuit of a fifth title has been, though, the outcome of the drivers’ championship should still be in McLaren’s hands. If both McLaren drivers outscore the defending champion at just one of the remaining five races, the task facing Verstappen toughens immensely. What’s more, McLaren believes three of the remaining circuits — Brazil, Qatar and Abu Dhabi — will play to the underlying strengths of its car much more than recent track layouts.
“The fact that there are five races and two sprints means that we can also increase the gap to Max. That’s how I see things,” Stella said. “I think we have good tracks coming for our car and I think we have more that we could have exploited out of our car.
“And to some extent the drivers themselves, I think they recognize themselves that they could have done a better job in some of the previous races. So I think we look at the next five races as opportunities to increase the gap on Max.”
Stella also believes the performance of the McLaren is not as underwhelming as recent results have suggested. In the five races since the series returned from its summer break at Zandvoort, Piastri’s average finishing position is 6.6 and Norris’ is 6.4. Verstappen’s is 1.4.
After Sunday’s race in Austin, Stella was convinced Norris would have had the pace to match Verstappen had he not lost a position to Charles Leclerc at the start and spent the rest of the race battling the Ferrari.
“I think in terms of the trend [of performance relative to Verstappen]today is a relatively reassuring race because I think without having to fight with Charles, which was certainly an entertaining fight itself, I think Lando had the pace to win the race today,” Stella said. “Obviously, he needed to gain the position on track, which is never easy with Max, and with a one-stop strategy, not necessarily we would have had many opportunities from a strategic point of view. But performance wise, I think we are reassured that the pace was sufficient to fight for the victory.”
Piastri’s lack of performance at Austin was harder to explain away, but Stella said important lessons were learned on Sunday that would be applied to upcoming rounds.
“This is certainly one of the most important points that we need to review, which is the fact that Oscar, in qualifying and in the race, seemed to have a couple of tenths of a second that he was not able to fully realize, and that possibly was available in the car,” Stella said. “I think we know, with Oscar, that when the conditions are such that we have low grip, you really need to challenge the car, lean on the understeer, oversteer, locking.
“This is an area of his driving that has an opportunity to improve, and in Oscar’s standards this means that he will improve pretty fast, and I think today we got quite a lot of information that adds to the information we got yesterday. I think already this morning we had some conversations with Oscar as to what we can do to extract more performance, so I think this is just data to learn from and Oscar will learn pretty soon.”
Stella was also keen to emphasize that McLaren’s disastrous sprint race, in which Piastri and Norris collided and retired, had significant repercussions for the rest of the weekend. Aside from the lost points, McLaren also missed out on crucial data from running the car over the shortened race format that would have unlocked more performance in qualifying and the race.
With the current generation of F1 cars, significant aerodynamic performance can be found by running at lower ride heights. To stop teams running dangerously low to the ground, a resin “plank” is fitted to the underside of the car that must maintain a certain thickness at various measuring holes to be considered legal.
Run the car too low over Circuit of the Americas’ bumpy surface and excessive plank wear can result in disqualification from the results — as Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton found out two years ago. The sprint race usually race offers teams a convenient preview of what to expect from the full-length grand prix, allowing them to fine tune their ride heights accordingly, but with no data from either car, McLaren had to play it safe in Austin and sacrifice potential performance.
“It’s about right heights and it’s about missing references to actually exploit fully what is allowed in a track like COTA, which we know has caught out some teams in the past,” Stella said. “It is one of those in which it’s very difficult to actually nail the last millimeter [of ride height] if you don’t have references coming from real running. Simulation can take you only to a certain point, then you need track data to actually go to the last millimeter.”
What will McLaren do now?
One way to increase the chances of a McLaren driver winning the title would be for the team to throw its full weight behind a single driver. Piastri would be the obvious choice based on his 14-point lead in the championship, although Norris’ better form at recent races is one of the many reasons why such a decision is not clear cut.
2:18
Verstappen wins U.S. GP in dominating fashion
Max Verstappen wins the U.S. Grand Prix, becoming the first driver to win seven races in the United States.
After multiple questions over such a strategy during the weekend, McLaren only became more entrenched in its belief that both drivers deserve equal opportunities. The only thing that will change that would be one driver being mathematically ruled out of the title fight.
“When it comes to having to make a call as to a driver, this will only be led by mathematics,” Stella said. “I can recall at least 2007, 2010, in which you go to the last race and it’s actually the third- [place driver] that wins the championship, but we’re not going to close the door unless this is closed by mathematics.”
So what is McLaren’s plan to fight Verstappen? According to Stella, the answer is remarkably simple: keep calm and carry on.
“Well, first of all, I need to keep myself calm, and by putting things in good perspective, I hope that I will be able to do so,” he explained. “We keep talking about the fact that what we are facing in this moment — which is a tight competition to win races, a tight competition in the quest for the drivers’ championship — is what Formula 1 is about. If anything, it was anomalous when we were doing easily P1, P2, like in Barcelona, in Bahrain, in some other places. That’s not what Formula 1 is about.
“So it’s a process of getting used with this kind of pressure, which we want to live with maximum intensity and minimum stress. We don’t want to lose the joy of doing what we do. We just want to make sure that we put ourselves in the state in which we perform at our best, which also includes having fun and recognizing that ultimately it’s quite a big privilege to be in this situation — and it’s a privilege that came thanks to the good work that McLaren, the team, the two drivers have been able to do.
“So what we do in the future is very easy. We keep doing the good work and the results will take care of themselves.”
