2026 McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

[Sevach]

Yeah, that’s how it goes. Bad luck—or, conversely, good luck for the rivals. I’ll just say that tracks ought to allow for racing and overtaking. The fastest driver didn’t win; it’s truly ridiculous.

McLaren fans, hang in there!

There was time to call off the stop.

From a McLaren point of view, once the safety car had ended they should have left him out and run to the optimum one stop strategy

Absolutely. Pitting on green after a VSC is worst call possible, especially as he was not under threat of undercut.

If he stayed out he would build tire offset and leave potential of benefitting from VSC, SC or red flag or building a gap.

If Norris didnt stop, is he making up a big enough gap to cover either Kimi or Max. Im not sure. At best hes pitting into 3rd and hoping.

The problem is that what they did meant they lost any possibility of things working out in their favor.

It would've been Norris-Leclerc-Antonelli... all about putting 25s between himself and Antonelli.
At least it would mean Kimi maybe would want to try and pass Charles to be in control of his destiny, but easier said than done.

As it was Kimi just sat a safe distance from Charles while having Max as a buffer protecting him(and that's because Mercedes declined from using George to do that).

[Slahinki]

Before he pitted he almost had 20 seconds on Leclerc anyway, just stay out for a couple more laps and see how that goes. Don't just copy the strategy of the guys that got the benefit of a VSC pitstop when you won't have it too. That just locks you into their strategy, but with more time lost. No potential of any tire offset or anything. The call to still pit when the VSC ended is just frankly mindbogglingly stupid.

[CjC]

Lando summed it up correctly over the radio on the cool down lap:
‘We were just too quick’

Let’s see what the Baku upgrade does

[Scorpia]

I dont think tire offset would have worked anyways seeing how hard it was to overtake. Once we missed the opportunity to pit under Vsc, this would have been the best outcome anyways.

[Ben1980]

From a McLaren point of view, once the safety car had ended they should have left him out and run to the optimum one stop strategy

Absolutely. Pitting on green after a VSC is worst call possible, especially as he was not under threat of undercut.

If he stayed out he would build tire offset and leave potential of benefitting from VSC, SC or red flag or building a gap.

If Norris didnt stop, is he making up a big enough gap to cover either Kimi or Max. Im not sure. At best hes pitting into 3rd and hoping.

The problem is that what they did meant they lost any possibility of things working out in their favor.

I think they probably took the wrong call, but maybe the sensible one. They should have risked it. But, not sure how much long running they had or anyone had on the mediums to confirm how far they go.

[Luscion]

[Badger]

And some of those laps were spent behind a slow GR losing time, so you can add time for that too McLaren had ridiculous pace today.

[F1NAC]

And some of those laps were spent behind a slow GR losing time, so you can add time for that too McLaren had ridiculous pace today.

No it wasn’t. As soon as he closed on Russell he pitted

[Def]

Dumb singh

[Darth-Piekus]

I am curious to hear the opinion of people here regarding the VSC. Stroll did not crash but lost the brakes,went to the track exit and was able to reverse and come back. Was the VSC justified or could it also be done with a Double Yellow?

[FittingMechanics]

From a McLaren point of view, once the safety car had ended they should have left him out and run to the optimum one stop strategy

Absolutely. Pitting on green after a VSC is worst call possible, especially as he was not under threat of undercut.

If he stayed out he would build tire offset and leave potential of benefitting from VSC, SC or red flag or building a gap.

If Norris didnt stop, is he making up a big enough gap to cover either Kimi or Max. Im not sure. At best hes pitting into 3rd and hoping.

The problem is that what they did meant they lost any possibility of things working out in their favor.

I think they probably took the wrong call, but maybe the sensible one. They should have risked it. But, not sure how much long running they had or anyone had on the mediums to confirm how far they go.

I really struggle to see the benefit of the call, even if the stop is quick. Maybe someone has an idea?

The way I see it, the best case when VSC ended would be to end up once again inP5 behind Russell but instead of 6.6 seconds back he would be 2s back. With the same exact set of problems. No tire offset, no opportunity to luck into a good position through SC, VSC or red flag, no way past Russell on new mediums, etc.

Surely it was worth staying out, seeing the pace, building the offset and seeing whether other incidents happen.

It is possible end result would be the same, VSC timing was super unlucky but this decision deprived them of any chance of beating Antonelli and Verstsappen.

[Ben1980]

The article on motorsport, shows that the lap times were shrinking between Lando and Leclerc with lap 13 pretty much neck and neck. With the others on new hards it seems Lando wouldn't have had the tyres to extend it much anyway and keep extending.

Basically the VSC secured 3rd no matter what.

[Darth-Piekus]

Perhaps but what killed Norris's race was mostly in my personal opinion the terrible pit stop.

[AR3-GP]

Stella:

After the race, Stella speaks to Viaplay. The team boss is clearly disappointed with the result, especially because Norris said to have the fastest car. "The feeling is that there is a bit of disappointment, because Lando had by far the fastest car today. As he said in the in-lap, we were too fast today: we were so fast that we were in front of the pit entrance for a few seconds when the virtual safety car was deployed."

https://www.gptoday.net/nl/nieuws/f1/29 ... elste-auto

[FittingMechanics]

Perhaps but what killed Norris's race was mostly in my personal opinion the terrible pit stop.

Pitstop just lost him time, he would still end up in P5 behind Russel on new mediums. I don't think anything really changes.

The VSC was super unlucky, Max being mature and letting Hamilton through also was bad for Lando. And then there was nothing to mix up the race afterwards.

Norris did a great first lap, then pulled away and just did an awesome race. He was just super unlucky.

BTW imagine how stupid would McLaren look if there was a crash soon after VSC. They are "lucky" that in the end it probably didn't mattet that they made a huge strategic blunder.