2025 McLaren F1 Team

[Ben1980]

So is it game over for Oscar after the first stint basically? Like assuming Max does not get taken out....at that stage he will have to help Lando?

Hypothetical: Max p1, oscar p2 or 3, lando p4......does the team have Oscar give a position up for Lando to win?

Oscar is gone. He has to basically run away and hide if he wants a chance. But if he's 3rd and Lando 4th, he will surely pull over.

[bauc]

So is it game over for Oscar after the first stint basically? Like assuming Max does not get taken out....at that stage he will have to help Lando?

Hypothetical: Max p1, oscar p2 or 3, lando p4......does the team have Oscar give a position up for Lando to win?

Oscar is gone. He has to basically run away and hide if he wants a chance. But if he's 3rd and Lando 4th, he will surely pull over.

I hope you understand Oscar can't be at two positions at the same time

Just kidding, I know you do....

[basti313]

So is it game over for Oscar after the first stint basically? Like assuming Max does not get taken out....at that stage he will have to help Lando?

Hypothetical: Max p1, oscar p2 or 3, lando p4......does the team have Oscar give a position up for Lando to win?

Oscar is gone. He has to basically run away and hide if he wants a chance. But if he's 3rd and Lando 4th, he will surely pull over.

They can just call him for a late pitstop...they would just make a mockery of themselves and the "papaya rules" if they do not do the necessary thing to clinch WDC for one of the drivers. No matter what it costs.

[mwillems]

I myself am surprised at the number of times I have criticized the 'execution of a race' by the team, all the above posts are post summer break, IIRC. It's painful to watch two talented drivers suffering mental agony like this. I guess it will 'toughen them up' , but the race team have faltered far too many times, many more than the individual mistakes by their two drivers. I think this might be the worst 'race-team' to win the constructor championship and the best 'design-engg-team' to win the constructor championship, both simultaneously.

I wish I kept a list of my strategy complaints in last two years. This has been going on for a long time, they are just unwilling to take any risk and even when they luck into a potentially beneficial situation they usually throw it away (like yesterday when Norris was holding up Verstappen).

Only time I can remember a good strategy call was that Norris one stopper that he lucked into because he was undercut.

They are definately willing to take risks, they quite ridiculously took a big risk yesterday.

[venkyhere]

I think the intention was to do a soft run at the end. And 2 long mediums runs. But part way through the second set of mediums they realised the hard was better, so binned them earlier.

So many things they could have done better.

Though interestingly I read that Lando could have lost 4 places in the pits if they had stopped. So maybe it did work out for him!

Would 4 places be the equivalent of a 22 (or 25, what was it) second loss ?

Guess it depends on who those 4 are. The Mclaren is not great at following, and overtaking was tough. Potential he was stuck in 7th for a long time. Especially on same tyres.

Oops ! I have held the view that the McLaren is the only car on the grid that can 'follow closely' because of the surplus front end grip they have with their magic front suspension. Suzuka, Singapore, Canada, Zandvoort, Austin etc come to mind where an McL39 is closely following either a sister car or someone else for large durations of a stint (may/may not be able to overtake) and still not needing to back-off-massively to protect the front tyres.

The reason myself and @Farnborough are even considering a short S tyre blast with 1-1.5s/lap delta between lap25 and lap32-33, is because it would enable easy pass over those '4 cars' (two/three actually - one/both Mercs, plus Sainz) at the first DRS attempt and still shave away 10-12 seconds off Max's laptime. Even if Max pushed in response, he would have suffered massive deg since he had to reach lap32 on his old mediums. In the end, we saw how his laptime started dropping because he encountered the dirty air from the blue flag Alpines for 4-5 laps. It would have atleast brought Piastri much closer behind him.

The only reason I can think of, as to why Mclaren didn't try something like this, is because after the 'oops' moment had passed, and they realized that they didn't have the pace delta that they thought they would, they were simply waiting for 'flexibility' that a late SC would offer.

Redbull did this exact thing - short S tyre bursts at mega pace to pressure the P1-P2 guys into driving faster with reduced tyre management - in Barcelona. The only reason it flopped was because there were one too many SCs and they ran out of tyres and had to fit the unsuitable H which no one else touched that day.

[chrisc90]

Would 4 places be the equivalent of a 22 (or 25, what was it) second loss ?

Guess it depends on who those 4 are. The Mclaren is not great at following, and overtaking was tough. Potential he was stuck in 7th for a long time. Especially on same tyres.

Oops ! I have held the view that the McLaren is the only car on the grid that can 'follow closely' because of the surplus front end grip they have with their magic front suspension. Suzuka, Singapore, Canada, Zandvoort, Austin etc come to mind where an McL39 is closely following either a sister car or someone else for large durations of a stint (may/may not be able to overtake) and still not needing to back-off-massively to protect the front tyres.

The reason myself and @Farnborough are even considering a short S tyre blast with 1-1.5s/lap delta between lap25 and lap32-33, is because it would enable easy pass over those '4 cars' (two/three actually - one/both Mercs, plus Sainz) at the first DRS attempt and still shave away 10-12 seconds off Max's laptime. Even if Max pushed in response, he would have suffered massive deg since he had to reach lap32 on his old mediums. In the end, we saw how his laptime started dropping because he encountered the dirty air from the blue flag Alpines for 4-5 laps. It would have atleast brought Piastri much closer behind him.

The only reason I can think of, as to why Mclaren didn't try something like this, is because after the 'oops' moment had passed, and they realized that they didn't have the pace delta that they thought they would, they were simply waiting for 'flexibility' that a late SC would offer.

Redbull did this exact thing - short S tyre bursts at mega pace to pressure the P1-P2 guys into driving faster with reduced tyre management - in Barcelona. The only reason it flopped was because there were one too many SCs and they ran out of tyres and had to fit the unsuitable H which no one else touched that day.

I really don’t think the tyres were the limitation here to be fair. (In my opinion)

This was always marked as a 1 stop race, so you would expect the medium and hard (don’t forget it’s the hardest compound in the range) would last more than 28/29 laps on average if you considered a equal stint length.