McLaren made their worst call of the season. Oscar Piastri has suffered again

With his Formula 1 title hopes hanging by a thread, Oscar Piastri produced a display worthy of a world champion in Qatar.

But, with a first drivers’ title since 2008 within touching distance, his McLaren team made their worst call in a season of increasing missteps. The error now threatens to lose them what was once considered unlosable.

After his most dominant weekend since the Dutch Grand Prix in late August – where Piastri took victory from pole position – his outside chance of a world championship was handed a team-inflicted blow in Qatar when the Australian finished second behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen after McLaren made a terrible decision.

A seemingly inevitable Piastri win – and at least a podium finish for McLaren teammate Lando Norris – turned into second and fourth for the pair, allowing Verstappen to sneak between them to second in the standings ahead of next weekend’s season finale in Abu Dhabi.

Verstappen’s seventh win of the season – equal with Piastri and Norris – saw the reigning four-time F1 world champion move within 12 points of Norris with a maximum of 25 points available at Yas Marina next weekend.

Piastri, now 16 points behind his teammate, needs an almost-unprecedented result to become the first Australian world champion since Alan Jones in 1980.

Since Piastri won at Zandvoort in late August to lead the standings by 34 points over Norris, and a whopping 104 over Verstappen, the Australian’s advantage has been relinquished completely by a series of self-inflicted wounds and a baffling loss of form.

The 24-year-old turned that around with a flawless display in Qatar, but was let down by a team that won the constructors’ championship six races ago in Singapore. His team has continued to find new ways to keep Verstappen in the hunt for a title that could have – and should have – been sealed long before Sunday’s latest own goal.

Piastri – who led Friday practice, took pole position and led every lap of Saturday’s sprint race and led comfortably from pole in Sunday’s Grand Prix – was in the box seat to win the 57-lap race when he had a three-second lead over Verstappen during lap seven when a safety car was called to clean up debris from an accident involving Sauber driver Nico Hulkenberg and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.

With the field restricted to a slower speed behind the safety car, Verstappen – and the rest of the field – pitted. McLaren instructed its two drivers, mindful that Norris would be stuck behind Piastri if they double-stacked, to stay on track.

It was a mistake that crippled the races of both drivers while handing Verstappen, no match for Piastri on pace all weekend, track position later in the race.

After Piastri made his mandatory second tyre stop from the lead with 16 laps left, and Norris followed suit two laps later, Piastri was 17 seconds behind the Dutchman, with Norris stuck back in fifth behind Williams’ Carlos Sainz and Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli.

Despite Piastri’s tyres being 10 laps younger than Verstappen’s, the gap was too big to overcome, with Verstappen winning by 7.995secs.

By trying not to disadvantage Norris in the pits, McLaren torpedoed the results of both drivers for a second straight weekend, following their double-disqualification in Las Vegas.

After a run of outs where he’d (mostly) been the architect of his own demise, Piastri was initially lost for words while Verstappen, barely concealing a knowing smirk, described McLaren’s indecision as “an interesting move”.

“Speechless … I don’t know any words,” Piastri said over team radio on his way back to the pits.

“I’m feeling pretty crap, as you can imagine,” he said in his post-race interviews.

“I don’t really know what to say. We didn’t get it right with the strategy. I left it in the team’s hands to decide what the best strategy was. They’ve clearly got more information than I do.

“In hindsight, it’s pretty obvious what we would have done. I’m sure we’ll discuss it as a team. It’s not all bad, obviously; it’s been a good weekend, and the pace has been really strong. But obviously a little bit tough to swallow at the moment.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was asked by Sky Sports if McLaren’s season-long quest to maintain fairness between its drivers was behind the decision to not pit at least one of its cars.

“In fairness, we didn’t expect everyone else to pit,” Stella said.

“When everyone else behind you pits, then it makes it the right thing to do. That could have been a loss for Lando in pitting both cars [together] with the double-stack, but the main reason was not expecting everyone else to pit. It wasn’t the correct decision.

“We understand Oscar being extremely disappointed because, from the start, he has done everything right. We always want to keep the options open for both drivers. They’re both in position to win the championship.”

McLaren’s internal ‘Papaya Rules’ ethos of letting its two drivers race one another fairly for the championship has come into question all season, increasingly so as Verstappen has gone from being a theoretical contender to a real one.

In an interview with F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast in November, McLaren CEO Zak Brown said McLaren would rather lose the title to Verstappen than to enforce team orders to guarantee Norris or Piastri wins the championship: “Forget it, that’s not how we go racing,” Brown said.

Verstappen’s victory has now halved his deficit to Norris in one fell swoop, while Piastri – who hasn’t been outside the top two in the standings for the past 20 rounds – now needs to win in Abu Dhabi and have Norris finish sixth or worse to take the title, given his 16-point deficit.

Piastri knows the scale of the task ahead, but Sunday showed that – even if he can reprise the early-season form that re-emerged in Qatar – that might not be enough.

“The pace was very strong and I feel like I didn’t put a foot wrong. It’s just a shame to not walk away with a win,” he said, before being asked what he needs to do in Abu Dhabi.

“Just drive like I did this weekend, that’s all I can do,” he replied.

“It was more than good enough to dominate this weekend. If I can do the same thing next weekend, I’ll be a happy man.”

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