The article says:chrisc90 wrote: ↑08 Dec 2025, 14:42Why wouldn’t max have been able to back the pack up?
Surely the split tyre strategy would have only worked if Oscar was in the lead and could build a big enough gap to Max so when Max putted he wasn’t ever going to come first.
Backing the pack up would have meant that the rear runners would have have to put early to give the undercut the chance of leapfrogging the cars infront. I think in that case McLaren would have had to take the lead in that instance in pitting Lando before the others.
I think RBR knew there was super little they could do realistically when the 2 behind Lando - Russel and Leclerc, didn’t have any pace to challenge Lando for position
I think it poses the same risk as backing the pack up with the car behind on mediums. It would have still meant that any of the McLarens would have had to overtake Max.mwillems wrote: ↑08 Dec 2025, 14:47The article says:chrisc90 wrote: ↑08 Dec 2025, 14:42Why wouldn’t max have been able to back the pack up?
Surely the split tyre strategy would have only worked if Oscar was in the lead and could build a big enough gap to Max so when Max putted he wasn’t ever going to come first.
Backing the pack up would have meant that the rear runners would have have to put early to give the undercut the chance of leapfrogging the cars infront. I think in that case McLaren would have had to take the lead in that instance in pitting Lando before the others.
I think RBR knew there was super little they could do realistically when the 2 behind Lando - Russel and Leclerc, didn’t have any pace to challenge Lando for position
While Verstappen and Norris started from the front row on fresh sets of medium compound tyres, Piastri took a set of hards. The McLaren appeared to run better on these tyres and they were the only team to reserve two fresh sets of them for both their drivers.
This compromised Verstappen’s efforts to slow down the field, as he explained. “We had very strong pace,” he said, “there’s really not much that I could have done different.
“What complicated it a bit was that Oscar was on a different strategy. So, you never know, of course, when he then pits, how much pace he has in hand to catch up again.”
https://www.racefans.net/2025/12/07/ver ... ther-cars/
I missed some of the article to be fair in my previous post, but Max said that because Oscar had good pace and could run further on his tyres, it complicated backing up the pack. But he'd mentioned it on the Saturday too, as a realistic option, and Stella seems to have also referenced that he was thinking of how to combat this strategy from Max and was worried.chrisc90 wrote: ↑08 Dec 2025, 14:52I think it poses the same risk as backing the pack up with the car behind on mediums. It would have still meant that any of the McLarens would have had to overtake Max.mwillems wrote: ↑08 Dec 2025, 14:47The article says:chrisc90 wrote: ↑08 Dec 2025, 14:42Why wouldn’t max have been able to back the pack up?
Surely the split tyre strategy would have only worked if Oscar was in the lead and could build a big enough gap to Max so when Max putted he wasn’t ever going to come first.
Backing the pack up would have meant that the rear runners would have have to put early to give the undercut the chance of leapfrogging the cars infront. I think in that case McLaren would have had to take the lead in that instance in pitting Lando before the others.
I think RBR knew there was super little they could do realistically when the 2 behind Lando - Russel and Leclerc, didn’t have any pace to challenge Lando for position
While Verstappen and Norris started from the front row on fresh sets of medium compound tyres, Piastri took a set of hards. The McLaren appeared to run better on these tyres and they were the only team to reserve two fresh sets of them for both their drivers.
This compromised Verstappen’s efforts to slow down the field, as he explained. “We had very strong pace,” he said, “there’s really not much that I could have done different.
“What complicated it a bit was that Oscar was on a different strategy. So, you never know, of course, when he then pits, how much pace he has in hand to catch up again.”
https://www.racefans.net/2025/12/07/ver ... ther-cars/
I’d even say backing someone up on hards is more of a compromise than mediums. Because you can’t get the extra longevity out of the tyre vs the mediums. Which wouldn’t be run anywhere near as hard as they could be if Max was dawdling round backing the pack up.
It would be interesting to see the pace comparisons between Max and McLarens were this weekend. I think Max would have had a couple tenths over both pretty easily
There was no slagging match in here lol
Add Baku Qualifying to this list - overdrove and touched the wall at Turn15, could have been front row otherwise.mwillems wrote: ↑08 Dec 2025, 14:19
- Lando binned it at Jeddah
- Made tons of smaller driving errors at the start of the season with a car he couldn't handle
- Had more pace than Oscar when catching him at Spa but kept losing all the time he'd gained when going off track multiple times
- Crashed into Oscar at Canada.
- He actually had a poor weekend at Canada, Qualifying 7th due to mistakes in Q.
- In his own words he lost eight points by locking up in China sprint Q.
- Topping Q1 and Q2 in Bahrain and screwing up Q3 and qualifying 6th, finishing 3rd
Making serious mistakes in 1/5 races is not great especially good, considering multiple weekends also had multiple mistakes, and this is not even considering other smaller issues like missing a pit box and losing a couple of seconds.
- Not helped by getting a 5s penalty from rolling forward at the start at Bahrain.
I'm not trying to overplay it all or downplay Lando, but we do need to be honest, he's still got work to do.
At the same time, I do think he made a lot less mistakes than some other fans like to come in here and say, which was that any time we didn't have pole by a clear margin then the drivers were terrible. Because to them it was inconceivable that the RB could be fast or the MCL39 have some flaws, the only answer being Max is god and Mclaren drivers are poor - which certainly came across as a highly subjective opinion based on favouritism.
