Regardless of how the Formula 1 World Championship ends, McLaren will make history anyway. If he wins it, it’s because he’ll be singing Iron Man again 17 years after the last time. And if he loses it, because he will be able to take credit for reviving Red Bull and Max Verstappen, his only rival in an unequal battle, in favor of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, both of whom are incredulous when they realize they have the enemy at home. In Qatar, the penultimate stop on the calendar, Norris had the first chance to decide the match to settle the matter. However, his strategists were subjected to one of those attacks on trainers, a kind of delirium that buried all the extravagance the MCL39 displayed on the track. Verstappen won for the seventh time to give more life to his options, in the same proportion as McLaren ran out of air. Piastri finished second and saved the furniture, something Norris, who eventually finished fourth, was unable to do. The Somerset rider was unable to beat Carlos Sainz, who scored his second podium in a Williams suit in one of the best races the Spaniard remembers; He will have to climb to the podium in Abu Dhabi if he wants to win the crown without relying on what others do. For his part, Fernando Alonso ranked seventh.
After the experience of last year’s Grand Prix, where several left-front tires were on the verge of opening due to the dangerous Losail asphalt, Pirelli put a plan into action to avoid greater evils. The Italian supplier placed a limit of 25 laps on all its vehicle combinations, a commitment that translated into a very favorable requirement when it came time to draw up the roadmap. What’s more, after Nico Hulkenberg forced the safety car out on lap seven, when trying to overtake Pierre Gasly, and caused a race into the garages, for the entire grid except the McLaren. The brilliant minds at the technology centre, in Woking (Great Britain), played Russian roulette and left their drivers outside, while the rest of the group headed inside for the stop, as was apparently planned. Inexplicably, the British team left its drivers sold, something that is really required of a competitive animal like Verstappen.
Pirelli’s interference and McLaren’s poor reading generated additional pressure on Norris and Piastri, who were dedicated to the need for another ‘safety’ appearance that would bring them back into the battle for the win that had been taken for granted before it even started. The engineers’ mistake weakened the victory and who knows whether the title too, which will inevitably be decided next Sunday, in Abu Dhabi, is the scene of a hugely festive final, like the one celebrated by Sebastian Vettel, in 2010, or the one celebrated by Verstappen himself, in 2021. In both cases, it was Red Bull that orchestrated the ambush in which Alonso (2010), the first, and Lewis Hamilton (2021) fell. after.
The foresight the Red Buffaloes usually display belies the decisions made recently in the major candidates’ workshop, none of which were as unfortunate as the last. In Qatar, McLaren had everything in its power to conclude the championship, which was certain to end several weeks ago, given the enormous potential of its car. However, not giving a missile to Norris and Piastri would have allowed them to play down the poor eyesight of their people, who made an unacceptable mistake when one competes against a talent of Verstappen’s magnitude, reborn by the mistakes of his opponents. A week after eliminating the double achieved in Las Vegas, by incorrectly measuring the level of wear of the resin sheet under the car, McLaren put his boys between a rock and a hard place in Losail, where he asked them to use magic to get out of the ambush in which they were placed.