The Qatar GP fallout and the radio message Piastri dreads

Picture the scene: It’s the closing stages of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Max Verstappen is leading, George Russell is second, his Mercedes having proved very fast again in qualifying, Oscar Pistri is third with Lando Norris is in fourth.

It is the end of a gruelling season dominated by McLaren, who clinched the constructors’ title six races ago and by endless talk of its ‘papaya rules’.

This internal playbook for fairness between McLaren’s highly competitive drivers has been stretched and tested at times; Piastri questioning why he should yield a place to Norris in Monza because of a team error in the pitlane, for example. That cost him three points. Another three points swung Norris’ way in Singapore when the team took no action after Norris clattered into Piastri on the opening lap to pass him. “What’s the go here?” Piastri asked, later commenting that he didn’t feel the team’s refusal to give him the place back was “fair” even though the FIA stewards decided no action was necessary.

So here we are on the final lap at Yas Marina and the McLaren team radio is box office.

“Oscar, we need you to let Lando through so a McLaren driver wins the world championship. You can’t win it tonight, but Lando can. Please move over.”

Zigging when others Zag

Going into the Qatar weekend, Verstappen gave an interview in which he said that if he had been driving the dominant McLaren car the championship would have been over long ago. It was punchy, direct. It was intended to unsettle a McLaren team already rattled by disqualifications in Las Vegas that cost Norris 18 points and Piastri 12 points.

So was Red Bull’s decision tonight to send chief strategist Hannah Schmitz up onto the podium. This was the woman who made the right call on lap seven when the safety car was deployed due to an accident. Although she’s right to be proud of her decision, she wasn’t alone. All the other strategists made the same call, because lap seven was known to be the earliest point in the race where a pitstop could be made within the lap limitations imposed for the race by the FIA and Pirelli.

It’s never a good feeling in F1 when everyone else does something different from you, whether that’s in car design or race strategy. Ferrari had it in 1996 when their car looked worryingly different from everyone else’s. Lewis Hamilton experienced it in Hungary 2021 when he lined up on the grid at a restart alone, because everyone else pitted for slick tyres.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella did the right thing in Qatar to take full responsibility for the squad’s wrong decision that cost Piastri a certain race win and Norris a podium – and if Norris had finished ahead of Verstappen it would have put the Dutch driver out of the championship fight and guaranteed a McLaren world champion.

But Stella did make the point that it is a horrible situation when you are the lead car and you don’t know what the others will do because they are behind you. McLaren expected to have a number of cars copy them to provide a buffer between them and Verstappen at the restart. Splitting the strategies and pitting one driver would have led to one of them winning big at the expense of the other. Pitting both would have cost Norris as the second car, because he would have to wait for service and then likely lose more time as the team held him to avoid unsafe release.

Piastri had finally rediscovered his form and confidence in the car. He completely dominated the weekend. And yet he lost a win that would have given him a fighting chance next weekend.

Now, by falling behind Verstappen in the points standings – and with Norris picking up a lucky extra couple of points after Andrea Kimi Antonelli went wide in the final laps – it opens up the possibility of a nightmare scenario such as the one laid out above. His face on the podium showed that he knows this could now be his fate.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Dom Gibbons / LAT Images via Getty Images

Sainz and Verstappen to the max

It was a really good night for Red Bull and Williams; both maximised their competitive opportunity with great teamwork and flawless execution. When Laurent Mekies took over as team principal before the Belgian GP which hosted round 13, Red Bull had 172 points, of which 165 were Verstappen’s. Eleven rounds later – of which he has won five – the team is on 426 and the Dutchman 396. Where he had been averaging 13.75 points per race prior to the change of regime, he has since been averaging 21 points and has a chance at an unlikely fifth world title on Sunday.

Meanwhile Sainz was also the beneficiary of the right strategy call by the team. He also gained from a hold up for Antonelli leaving his pitbox to jump the Italian for fourth place and turned that into third place at the chequered flag with a dogged drive.

Clearly being told to manage the tyres, his awareness of what was happening as Norris fought to get ahead of Antonelli behind him was impressive. As was his exhortation to the team to allow him push as hard as possible to secure the podium. It was a perfect example of team and driver in harmony. Williams is building a high-performance mindset under James Vowles that will stand them in good stead next season. If their car is as good as they are hoping, we may see them on the podium more often. As it is, Sainz is the first Williams driver for a decade to score more than one podium in a season.

For a team that started 2025 managing expectations, saying it would not perform well as all development efforts would be focused on the new rules in 2026, this has been a great season. Now confirmed fifth in the constructors’ table, they have 137 points with one race to go, compared to 17 points and ninth in the standings last season: a 700% improvement.

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– The Autosport.com Team