F1 team bosses and some of the drivers share their view on the happening at McLaren, as they recollect their moment of similar nature.
What transpired at McLaren in F1 Hungarian GP is not something new to the sport, with all of the greats and championship winners having gone through a similar phase at some point in their careers. It is actually a good problem to have which means they are winning.
The likes of Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, all have faced similar in-team deliberation. It is one of the biggest aspect of F1 and one which will never change in future as well, no matter how many discussions or rules of engagement is applied.
Even though Lando Norris got the race lead in the final stint due to a likely favourable strategy, McLaren insisted on playing the culture and ethos game by asking the Brit to give back the place to Oscar Piastri, who passed him at the start and led for most of the race.
The team vs driver situation eventually got in the favour of team, with one eye at the constructors’ championship which McLaren is in a better position to win against Red Bull than the drivers’ title at this juncture, with Norris behind Max Verstappen by a larger gap.
It was a good chance to get points away from Verstappen in the fight for the drivers’ championship, but McLaren stuck to their ethos and focussed on securing a 1-2 finish and collect the maximum points for the constructors’ championship.
Here’s some of the F1 team bosses sharing their experience along with some drivers’ view –
Christian Horner: “They didn’t need to make life that complicated for themselves. I mean they were in a pretty comfortable situation. They chose to pit Lando two laps earlier, which, you know, usual practice unless you want your tail car ahead is to pit the lead car first. And then they gave themselves a lot of work to do to reset that at the back end of the race. So obviously that’s their business, but they perhaps didn’t need to create that problem for themselves. It’s the drivers interest versus the team’s interest. There’s always a conflict.”
Frederic Vasseur: “It’s a good problem. Sometimes, it’s a good problem. First, during the race, I’m not focused on the McLaren, I’m focused on my cars, and I don’t know why they did the undercut with Norris on Piastri, perhaps that they had good reasons with the other cars around, or I don’t know, and I don’t want to make any comment on this. But then for sure, I can perfectly understand that for Piastri, it’s a bit harsh. He’s leading the race, he’s doing a good job, and your teammate is doing the undercut on you it’s a bit harsh.”
Toto Wolff: “You can only manage the situations when you actually run into it and you find yourself exposed. That is the first time that it happened to them. We only learned from our experiences, how we can manage a situation where two cars, two drivers can win in the same team and you like to collect points without giving up a drivers’ championship. I am sure they are going to sit down and come up… we came up back in the day first with the rules of engagement and then we didn’t want to call it rules anymore so we called it racing intent. I am sure there is going to be a paper soon that is going to come out.
“I have no doubt that Andrea and Zak have very strong leadership and it is about defining that framework, what is happening in each of those possible situations. In Hungary, we had the same situation with Lewis and Valtteri – almost the same – we asked to invert the cars, promised to Valtteri that if Lewis couldn’t overtake Kimi, I believe it was, then we would revert back, and we did it. We stood to our values even though Lewis was in the championship at that stage. This is what McLaren decided to do today, the right thing, stand by what they said and now they will go and discuss with the drivers ‘what do we want to do going forward’.”
Fernando Alonso: “I don’t know, I mean a race win is different than a P10-P11 but yah, if that was the agreement before the race you have to follow. But yeah, it could be frustrating.”
Valtteri Bottas: “It is difficult, everyone here is a racer and here to win but I don’t know the background, but there is always certain rules within teams that certain scenarios that we need to play it for the team. So I don’t know the details but yeah in the end, the team goes first in this sport.”
Alexander Albon: “I don’t know. All the power to Lando, very respectful to be able to do that. I don’t think it is easy, it defies racing driver logic. But he’s a team man and McLaren is doing the right things. They’re obviously also fighting for the constructors’, so they’re not being stupid. They’re thinking of the big picture. I’m not sure they’re in the drivers’ championship, but they are in the constructors’ championship, so I understand it. Lando’s going to have some more wins anyway. He doesn’t need to worry.”
Here’s Oscar Piastri reflecting on F1 win, Mark Webber
Here’s McLaren trio on what transpired
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