Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris relay on what happened in F1 Qatar GP to lose out, as Andrea Stella expanded on wrong strategy and what can be done in Abu Dhabi.
It started well for McLaren’s Piastri in F1 Qatar GP to lead the way unlike Norris, who lost second to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. It was going as per the plan despite one place loss, but the safety car on Lap 7 changed the course of the grand prix, putting the Dutchman in command.
The strategy from McLaren undone the work done by the drivers, especially Piastri. When everyone pitted, the team opted to go ahead with the pre-decided strategy of stopping on Lap 25. It ended up being the wrong choice as it left Piastri and Norris to fight it out on track.
There were questions already in the minds of both the drivers, but once in motion, they couldn’t do much. Piastri pushed to stop early to chase Verstappen but the Dutchman had enough in the bank. Team boss Stella acknowledged the error to give up a free stop to Red Bull.
The Italian noted that they thought there will not be many stoppers, but almost the whole field did, which put McLaren in a bad position. Stella agreed that there was some consideration of Norris losing out in a double-stack, but it wasn’t the ultimate reason to avoid doing that.
He, however, noted of some bias – without specifying what – but added that they will go through the review to understand everything well. For Piastri, he defended the team, even though he was disappointed to miss out on a win after his recent struggles.
He felt only Monza was the race where maybe there was larger chatter, but nothing else has been outrightly bad in his case. The Australian eventually dropped to third in the standings to be at 392 points against Verstappen’s 396 and Norris’ 408. Also, McLaren reached to 800 points as a team.
Norris agreed that they could have done things different with the strategy, but in hindsight it is always like this. Stella said the tight field exposed some of the weakness of the F1 team off-late, but how they collectively respond to it, is the key aspect of such situations.
Race, frustration –
Piastri: “Pretty high – and that’s saying quite a lot given the last few races I’ve had. But, yeah, I mean, clearly, we didn’t get it right today, which is a shame because the whole weekend went very, very well. We had a lot of pace. I felt like I drove well. So, yeah, it’s pretty painful. I mean, I think on a personal level, I feel like I’ve lost a win today. In Vegas, I lost a P4. Obviously, for the team, it was a pretty painful weekend. But, yeah, I think for me personally, this probably hurts more.”
Norris: “There aren’t that many things at the lead that we did. And we thought we did what was correct. So nothing wrong. I mean, it wasn’t. I mean, I just, I still had a long race ahead of me, so I had to focus and do my best. So yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, nothing I can do about it, obviously not our greatest day, not our greatest weekend. But I’ve had a…then if anyone saw the run of results I had before that, we weren’t great. So I’ve put myself in this position. I’m still happy.
“It wasn’t our finest day, it wasn’t my finest weekend in terms of driving and putting things together, but that’s life. Like everyone has bad weekends, so I take it on the chin. We all take it on the chin and we see what we can do next weekend. In the end, he [Antonelli] made a mistake, so thank you for sending him home. As for Abu Dhabi, I guess the same as every weekend. I try and beat them, they try and beat me. It’s nothing different. So just want to go to bed.”
Strategy –
Piastri: “I asked, what are we doing? Because we were getting pretty close to the pit entry and I hadn’t had a call yet. So, I think when you don’t get a call instantly when the Safety Car comes out, clearly there’s probably some discussions going on about what to do. And in that situation, you have to trust the team because they have a lot more information than the driver in the car on where gaps are and stuff like that. So, yeah, I mean, in that scenario I have to trust what the team decide. Yeah. When I got told that everyone has pitted except for me, Lando, and Ocon, and then Ocon pitted the next lap, I knew we were in some trouble. So, yeah, I think clearly some things to review. But, yeah, I don’t have any answers at the moment.”
Norris: “Probably yeah. But both of us should’ve done. So I would’ve been head over the other way, because we would’ve double stacked and potentially I would’ve lost time, a bit of time. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have lost the position, I don’t think. But yeah, we were…it’s something we’re going to talk about and, and review. But what else? I have faith that the team are making the right call and that’s what I had to do.”
Stella: “Yeah, I think in terms of the outcome of the decision, that’s a fair interpretation. Effectively, we have conceded one pit stop to a rival that was fast today. Obviously, we did it for a reason. The reason was that we didn’t want to end up in traffic after the pit stop. But obviously, all the other cars and teams had a different opinion in relation to a safety car at lap seven. Everyone pitted, and this made our staying out ultimately being incorrect from a race outcome point of view. Like I said, because Verstappen was fast and also because the tyre degradation was low, ultimately this decision was significantly penalising because clearly Oscar was in control of the race and deserved to win it, and we lost the podium as well with Lando. Well, certainly for Lando there was the extra consideration, as you say, of losing additional time because of the double-stack pit stop. So it was in the consideration, but it wasn’t the main reason not to stop both cars. We thought that traffic could have been a problem for both cars, and like I said before, in reality that was not the right interpretation of the situation at the time that we should have had. I think in terms of the misjudgment is something that we will have to review, discussing internally. We’ll have to assess some factors, like for instance whether there was a certain bias in the way we were thinking that led us as a group to think that not all cars necessarily were pitted. There are sometimes some objective reasons, sometimes there may be some biases in the way you think.
“We will have to go through the review in a very thorough way, but what’s important is that we do it as usual in a way that is constructive, is analytical. I think already after Vegas we have had the possibility for me, and I was very proud of the team, to see how strong the no-blame culture is at McLaren, how much our culture is a culture of progress, is a culture of continuous improvements. Racing is tough, racing may give you tough lessons, but this is the history of champions. I work with Michael Schumacher, we won several titles together, we all think about the titles now. After Vegas I was thinking how much pain he had to go through, for instance, when Michael started his experience at Ferrari. This is just the history of Formula 1, this is the true nature of racing. We are disappointed, but if anything, as soon as we start the review, we will get even more determined to learn from our lessons, adapt and be stronger as a team. And make sure that this phenomenal, beautiful opportunity that we have to compete for the Drivers’ Championship and be the ones that actually stop Verstappen’s dominance in this period of Formula 1, we want to face it at the best of ourselves. I’m looking forward to the next race and I’m looking forward to seeing a strong reaction from our team.”
Showed pace –
Piastri: “I think in the next few days, probably, yes, that will be quite an encouraging thing. I think this weekend is probably one of my best of the season. There are one or two others that I can think of being on the same level as this weekend. So, from that side of things, I’m very, very happy and very pleased to just be back in terms of pace. But unfortunately, it’s another weekend where something’s just not gone our way.”
Faith, team –
Piastri: “I don’t think… It’s certainly not a catastrophe. I think we made a wrong decision today. I think that’s clear, but it’s not like the world ended. So, obviously, it hurts at the moment, but with time, things will get better. There’s been lots of difficult moments—this year, previous seasons together—and I feel like you always become stronger through some of these moments. But it all depends on how you deal with it. So I’m sure we’ll get through it. But, yeah, obviously, at the moment, it does hurt. I don’t think there’s really been too many scenarios where it’s been detrimental to us, really. Obviously, there was what happened in Monza, but that’s really the only one where maybe you can… Well, a lot of people did argue about it!
“But I think the last few races have been nothing to do with how we’ve approached things as a team going wrong. On my side, it’s been some things with the car and myself just not working. Clearly, Lando has been very quick the last few weeks. This weekend, I think we got it wrong just because that’s what we thought was the right thing to do – not because we were concerned about what was fair or what was not. So I don’t think we need to change that approach. I think it yields a lot of positives. Yes, there are some tough moments, but there are also a lot of tough moments if you go in a different direction to that. So, yeah, I don’t think we need to change anything.”
Drivers handling the situation –
Stella: “First of all, I think we have to acknowledge as a team that our drivers have all the reasons to be disappointed, because, like I said before, they are driving very well. They are doing an extremely good job. I think we saw here with Oscar that even the races in which he seemed to be struggling a bit from a performance point of view, there were some technical reasons associated with the requirement of the car in some low-grip conditions. We come here, high grip, and immediately we see that he is in his natural space and he is very, very fast. But, to answer your question, it’s the drivers themselves, actually, that have already done the first step. They have already been supportive of the team.
“They have already expressed that we race together, we go together. In the space of such a long season, there may be opportunities, missed opportunities, things that we could have done better across the board. Sometimes it’s the drivers, sometimes it’s the team. We go united, and the drivers have already expressed that after this race. I’m really very proud of having Oscar and Lando in this team. They are two incredible leaders for this team. Together, we will lead the team to Abu Dhabi, an event in which we want to make sure that we are in condition to realise the potential of this team and execute a perfect weekend.”
How to approach Abu Dhabi, team calls –
Stella: “Well, the first element to focus on from a team point of view, I would say, is to make sure that we are in condition, prepared, determined to execute perfect race weekends. Because the pace has been in the car, the drivers are doing an exceptionally good job, but over the last couple of races, from a team point of view, we have not been in condition to capitalise on the good work of the drivers and the potential we have in the car. When it comes to the fact that we have two drivers in the quest for the World Championship, our philosophy and our approach will not change. We will leave both Oscar and Lando the possibility to compete and pursue their aspiration. Oscar, from a points point of view, is definitely in condition to win the title. We have seen before in the history of Formula One that when you have this kind of situation, sometimes it’s the third one that actually wins. We have seen it, I think, in 2007, in 2010, and Oscar is fast. I think he deserves to be able to just realise his performance.
“We will let the drivers be in condition to race each other, but above all, what’s important for us is that we are in condition to beat Verstappen with one of our two drivers. I think whatever call we make in terms of using the collaboration of our drivers, we will have to follow some of our fundamental principles, which are foundational to our approach. We want to be fair to our drivers, we want to race with integrity, and we want to race in a way that doesn’t surprise our drivers. So between now and Abu Dhabi, there will be further conversation with Lando and Oscar. We will confirm our racing approach, but certainly what I can say is that if any of the drivers is in condition to pursue the quest to win the title, then we will respect this, and there will be no call which excludes the other drivers when the other driver is in condition to win. So we will see what scenario will unfold, but definitely what I can say is that there will be conversations and there will be a way of going racing which is united between the team and the drivers, like we have always done.”
Why the struggles now –
Stella: “I think in a season, you can have various phases. I think we have seen this with the drivers. We have seen this in terms of momentum of the various teams. In a way, even in terms of execution, you may have an accumulation of issues just in a given period, which makes it look like, ‘oh, what’s happening now’? In reality, I think there are no specific reasons. The issue we had in Vegas is very, very different to the issue we have here, obviously. I don’t think there’s any specific reason.
“It’s just a reminder that in racing, you have to be in control of all the possible details. I think what’s happening is that the tighter the competition is, the more you are in the spotlight, the more issues are exposed. Rather than a reason why issues are happening in the moment in time, I think it’s the fact that the competition is very tight, the stake is very big, and we are exposed as a team. It doesn’t change what we have to do. We just have to make sure that we execute perfect weekends.”
Here’s race start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-qatar-grand-prix-verstappen-jumps-norris-to-snatch-p2-on-the-race-start.1850232522975616997
Here’s how F1 Qatar GP panned out