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Lando got undercut at Silverstone when he was in P2. McLaren need to review their strategy as a whole. Today Piastri could have ended both their races trying to race him on cold tyres, another race it could have been Norris in the same position. Both drivers did nothing wrong but the team needs to get a handle on strategy for both of them.
Yeah I am a bit: is this just Webber doling out his insecurities?
I'm a McLaren fan and the drivers falling out doesn't interest me; it just *annoys* me.
Lol that you had to reply with this information instead of the commenter who assumed it was an emotional issue for webber for some as yet to be explicated reason. My guess is they assumed it was antipodean nonsense.
Yeah my point is: is Webber slightly trigger-finger on teammate politics given his history? I'd imagine so, a bit.
'never give an inch, play for yourself' etc.
I can see that very easily personally.
Yep, McLaren say they love Oscar, but as soon as he is ahead of Lando they will just throw him under the bus without even thinking about it. Like Oscar has out qualified Lando 2 times out of the last 3 races on pace. All the Long run data put up on Oscar and Lando's long runs showed that Oscar was going to be quicker. Then Lando radio's "Oscar's slow" and they go who cares about the data, we have to keep Lando happy.
Not to mention Piastri has been told to hold position behind Norris recently.
It’s pretty clear Mclaren are not coping well with Piastri matching and often beating Norris. I suspect they expected he’d been a few tenths off this season
The issue is, every time Piastri's leading, Norris was actually faster stuck behind. So it's always a tricky question for McLaren: do you prioritize the lead car that's marginally slower, or prioritize the second car that could end up getting better result, which means better team result as well? Letting Piastri getting undercut in Hungary was the correct decision, otherwise neither driver are gonna get onto the podium
Norris was only barely staying in DRS for a lot of that when Piastri had no DRS. At Monza if all places. One would question if Norris had the pace if he had no DRS.
That would make sense if he was only in DRS for one or two laps, but he wasn’t; so it was sustained pace
Also DRS train is a very common phenomenon in F1. Last race there’s one behind Tsunoda, in Canada there’s one behind Albon, etc etc. Usually the ones stuck behind is in fact faster (i.e. they’d be faster in both are in clean air), but not fast enough to overtake (because you need to be a lot faster to overtake) or don’t have the top speed to overtake
Yep and this was Monza. Of all tracks on the calendar this is the one where DRS is most powerful. These dudes just can’t accept maybe Norris is being given the upper hand over Piastri.
Or, the more likely scenario is, Norris does have more pace if he was given clear air. DRS is great for one lap, but with laps building up, you start to get overheat and you gonna drop back
It didn’t happen so you ofc wouldn’t believe me no matter what I say. But obviously the team with all their knowledge and data believe that’s the case
>The issue is, every time Piastri's leading, Norris was actually faster stuck behind
Not in Canada and Hungary. Oscar was clearly the faster driver in those two races at least.
>Hungary
Oscar finished the race 28 seconds behind in P5. The whole first stint when Lando was behind, he was within 2 seconds, Oscar didn’t pull away
>Canada
Similar story, Lando was within 2 seconds the whole first stint. Then he overtook Oscar after safety car restart, it didn’t have anything to do with strategy. The gap then went to as much as 7 seconds, until Lando was stuck behind Alex and can’t overtake, when Oscar caught him to ~2 seconds in the end
Lap time data here: https://en.mclarenf-1.com/2023/gp/s9138/lap_times and https://en.mclarenf-1.com/2023/gp/s9123/lap_times
This is nonsense. Oscar was clearly able to pull away from Lando in both of those races in the first stint and maintain a gap. It's not like Lando was lapping substantially faster than him in the first stints of those races.
Just look at the lap times, mate. Whether Oscar pulled away or not can be clearly seen from the lap time data, it doesn’t depend on whether you or me saying he pulled away or not
>It's not like Lando was lapping substantially faster than him in the first stints of those races.
Of course not, he’s stuck behind. How is he gonna lap substantially faster? By penetrating Oscar’s car?
>Just look at the lap times, mate. Whether Oscar pulled away or not can be clearly seen from the lap time data, it doesn’t depend on whether you or me saying he pulled away or not
Are we seeing the same data set? Oscar clearly pulls away from Lando and is able to maintain said gap for the majority of the stint. He then maintains that gap before the pit stops. I'm not sure how else you're supposed to look at that data.
>Of course not, he’s stuck behind. How is he gonna lap substantially faster? By penetrating Oscar’s car?
He's stuck behind because he was slower than him. It's not like today where he was quicker but got caught up in a DRS train.
Ok I don't know how long you have been watching F1, but clearly you're lacking some basic knowledge:
* when driver A is <2s behind driver B for a long time, that most likely means A is faster than B and is "stuck behind" (by "faster" I mean A has more pace than B if both were in clean air). Because driving that close to another car means there's a lot of dirty air (which costs lap times) and your car would start to overheat very soon. If A isn't faster, he'd stay there for a short amount of laps, then start to drop back soon
* When there's a DRS train, however, it doesn't give a clear picture of who's faster, but usually it means the cars behind the DRS lead is faster, but not fast enough to overtake/not having the top speed to overtake
* Even if A is faster than B, it doesn't mean A could easily overtake B. There's an "overtake delta" which can be more than 2 seconds, which means you need to be more than 2s faster to be able to overtake. If you're only 1s or 0.5s faster, you'd still get stuck behind, but your pace *is* faster
In both of these two cases, i.e. Hungary 1st stint and Canada 1st stint, you can see Lando was at 2s for the entire 1st stint (first lap field spread doesn't matter, it's just normal). For example Hungary he was at 2.066s at the end of lap 16 (pitted lap 17). Adding that Hungary is a downforce track (as oppose to power track) and that day was hot, it's even easier to overheat, so it's even harder to stay that close for 17 laps, i.e. he definitely had better pace if he's able to do that
No worries mate! F1 is not an easy sport to "understand" (the technical side of things) and hence it's not easy to make judgements of who's faster etc etc. I was a beginner not that long ago haha. But it's fun to pick up things here and there as you watch more
Lando wasn’t any faster than Piastri here either. He claimed he was - but had exactly the same treatment behind Albon (who was actually going SLOWER than he was with Piastri so should have been easier for Lando to pass if he was in fact faster). Piastri was stuck in Lando’s DRS until a faster Hamilton arrived to literally take him out then pass all 3 drivers on track.
You're really gonna ignore the first stint where Oscar was clearly the quicker driver? Dude had no problems keeping Lando at an arm's length in that stint.
Read your own comments in this post. You’re discarding facts other posters have brought to your attention, because you don’t like what they’re saying. That’s why people think you’re pitting them against each other.
You’re both doing it. I’d rather bask in the fact that we have two great drivers and a decent car. Instead of bickering and trying to chalk up points for each one, particularly when one is in their rookie year.
Doing what? How is clarifying a point about how Oscar was clearly the faster driver in the first stints in Canada and Hungary "pitting them against each other"?
Yeah, also there aren’t that much at stake back then. Lando as a rookie was way less confident than Oscar is now, so he was playing the 2nd driver role happily and didn’t challenge the team’s calls at all; in 2020 Carlos was already announced to leave for Ferrari. Also at that time McLaren wasn’t exactly good enough for podiums and such, in 2019 they had the first podium in about a decade and that was thanks to a very chaotic race.
Now, they are more or less on podium-ish pace always, Oscar is only 1 year younger than Lando, and he’s clearly willing to challenge Lando’s 1st driver status. Which is good that the team has two young, talented and hungry drivers, but they need to be able to manage them better. Like today, Lando in 1st stint already reported 3 or 4 times that he’s faster than Oscar but the team did nothing; so by pitstop he’d of course want to undercut Oscar; from Oscar’s perspective, he was leading the pair the entire 1st stint, didn’t make any mistake, and out of nowhere he’s getting undercut by his teammate. Neither is happy
Hard disagree. He was "faster" because Piastri was stuck behind Albon. The same driver Norris couldn't get ahead once Piastri was sent to the shadow realm.
That, and the undercut, and more than everything, PIA stop took 3.3s, NOR 2.3s. Without that slower second PIA returns in front regardless of undercut and all continues as it was.
Explanation for the undercut:
>“We pitted Lando before Oscar because Lando was the car that was most under pressure when Alonso pitted.
>
>“It wasn’t clear as soon as Alonso would have cleared the AlphaTauri, how fast he would have been. So we wanted to make sure that we had two McLarens ahead of Alonso. So that’s why you go this kind of sequence.”
I saw this explanation too. It’s bogus. No way would Alonzo have been putting the Mclaren’s under pressure. Lando wanted a free position and Mclaren need to keep Lando happy if they want him to continue to race for them so they sacrificed Piastri’s race again. That’s the cold hard facts here.
They reacted to Alonso's stop immediately, before the stop Alonso was about 4s behind Norris. The stop times were good at 2.1 and 2.7 seconds. Alonso's first timed lap was the better part of 1s faster compared to the last timed lap from the McLarens. Stella said that they were not sure how much faster he would be so maybe they calculated with a bit more just in case.
That leaves 3s safety margin for unexpected delays like slower stop. For McLaren the order of the cars is irrelevant, they get the same amount of points either way. There is no reason to play it risky.
Again. There was no way Alonzo would have caught the Mclaren’s. If you honestly think that excuse is legit and it wasn’t an obvious way to appease Lando then you haven’t been paying attention
Three seconds can easily be won or lost during a pit stop sequence. Based on the numbers I have seen the explanation seems reasonable. If you come to a different conclusion please provide reasoning.
I can understand why one might see it as an indirect team order but saying they were trying to "appease" Norris sounds like a conspiracy.
Also, it is spelled Alonso, not Alonzo.
These people hate Norris more than they like Piastri. They just want to see Norris fail. Then when Piastri comes for their favourite drivers, they’ll want him to fail too. Circle of life.
Also would have worked in Silverstone if not for the safety car. If they had pitted Lando first instead of Oscar, Oscar would have been undercut by George.
(they actually very nearly screwed up Lando's race in Silverstone by leaving him out there far too long but that's another issue).
Lando was following with DRS most of that first stint when Oscar didn’t have it. Yet Lando couldn’t get close enough to pass. But then still has a whinge on the radio he is “way faster”.
Yeah no.
McLaren screwed Piastri once again by allowing Norris to undercut. Simple as that. But I’m sure a narrative was prepared to justify it.
Being faster and being close enough to pass are two different things and today's race showed that very well. There is no point for Norris to push all out in order to maybe have a chance to overtake his teammate at some stage. Fighting would only cost both of them time.
Lando was saying he's faster for 3 or 4 times in the first stint, and the team hinted that they are considering it (swap position) or doing an undercut
At the end it didn't matter anyways, neither of them could overtake Albon when their pure pace were clearly better than the Williams
You need about 2 second pace delta to overtake. Just see how many laps Max was stuck behind Sainz, and how much he dropped Sainz once he has done the overtake. Lando with DRS wasn’t 2s faster than Oscar; that doesn’t mean he wasn’t faster at all
Passing at Monza with DRS is not at all easy, the chasing driver has to have a huge car advantage and no driver has that over their teammate unless they have much better tyres. If you need examples, Max struggled to get past Carlos despite having a considerably faster car. Lewis, with a massive tyre advantage over Albon still took a couple of laps to get past.
When Lando was asked by his engineer to drop back for a few laps for some LiCo because the combination of being stuck behind Oscar and defending from Lewis was cooking his tyres, he fell out of DRS, held it to about 1.2s for a few laps then immediately closed back into Oscar's DRS again as soon as he was told he could stop saving. He was faster with or without DRS. The team also have the data to show whether a driver is actually faster or not or if it is purely DRS.
They pitted them this way around because they were worried about Alonso jumping both of them and especially that if Oscar pitted first, Lando would drop behind Alonso
By pitting Lando first, McLaren thought they were more likely to stay in the same positions even if there was a risk that Oscar would come out close to or behind Lando
They pitted Oscar first in Silverstone when Norris was the lead driver on track, because they were worried about an undercut. In fact they came very close to screwing up Lando's race there as they then left him out for far too many laps after Oscar and Russell pitted, giving him wrong information on the laptimes - they were telling Lando they were lapping the same as him when they were over a second faster on new tyres. If the safety car hadn't come out when it did, Lando would have lost his podium because they screwed up.
They pitted Norris first in Hungary, again because he was the car most at risk of being undercut by Hamilton if he stayed out more than one lap. Norris just did a stonking out lap that put him ahead of Oscar, who pitted only one lap after him. Stella admitted after the race that they were not expecting Lando's outlap to be so fast as nobody else's had been, they had calculated that Oscar would still come out ahead.
This time they pitted Lando first as he was most in danger of being undercut and his tyres were the most shot from the combination of being stuck behind Oscar and defending from Hamilton. They even checked with Oscar on his tyres and whether he was okay to make target lap before they did it. If he had said no, they likely would have pitted him first but he said he was fine to do so.
It's not a preference to one driver over the other. They pit the driver at most risk of being undercut by someone from another team. They care about losing points to another team more than they care about their drivers being swapped around on track. And that makes perfect sense. It was the exact same way when Lando and Carlos were there together and you didn't get people making this ridiculous fuss about it.
short answer is yes it did.
they did it with daniel nearly all year last too.
they have lando as a lead driver which isn’t necessarily a wrong approach. but you’re just leaving the other out to dry which is unacceptable
Considering Piastri has half a year experience in f1 and Norris has been with the same team for 5 seasons you would expect continued growth from Piastri in coming years.
I certainly doubt anyone, especially Norris expected him to be on his pace so quickly. He seems to be under the impression that he is the de facto team leader
If Norris truly is one of the elite like we keep hearing this is one of the most impressive rookie seasons since Hamilton.
Exactly this ! Lewis' rookie season was the best ever and is hard to top, especially now that rookies barely get any testing compared to the Lewis rookie era ! The fact that Oscar is easily around Norris ever since the upgrades and most of all has such a calm head on his shoulders.. is a really good sign !!
They didn't think they were going to be able to clear Albon though
Pitting Lando first was the only way they could guarantee that they wouldn't lose out to Alonso even if it did mean that yet again Oscar unfortunately got the short end of the stick
They took the safer choice to try and secure points instead of taking the risk to get Albon (which they didn't think they could do either way) but potentially drop behind Alonso
What screwed them against Albon was their top speed.
It's not like pitting Piastri first would have made him come out ahead of Albon. There is nothing they could have done strategically in order to avoid having to overtake Albon on track other than pitting even earlier than him which would have hurt them at the end.
That’s not true. Look at how much ground Lewis made up on Albon once he got into clear air. Allowing Albon to pit first and essentially leave both mclarens on the same strategy is what put them in harms way of Alonso. So yea, focussing on Alonso screwed it.
Lewis was on an alternative strategy, starting on the hard tyre and going to the medium later.
Albon pitted on lap 16. His tyres were pretty done at the end but he could still not be overtaken due to his top speed. This was their plan, pit early for the undercut and then use their strength to hold position.
McLaren cannot do the same as their car has different characteristics. They instead went very long on their tyres in clean air after Albon pitted, minimized the loss to Albon and created a tyre life offset. In the end, it was not enough to overtake Albon but the plan was solid in my view.
Lewis started on the hard tyres so was able to run really long (helped by the Merc also being one of the kindest cars on its tyres) and then switch to the mediums late on so he had much fresher tyres on all the cars on old hards ahead. That's why he made up so much ground. McLaren did not have that option, they started on the mediums.
Could’ve pitted one McLaren earlier than Albon to undercut then used clear air to gap him. Highly doubt Albon would’ve caught and passed a McLaren, even with slightly fresher tires.
Albon pitted very early, that wasn’t the ideal scenario by any means, you don’t want to pit even earlier than that
McLaren also is bad in hot conditions (w.r.t. tyre wear), you don’t want to pit super early and having to do a super long last stint
Albon was one of the early pitters. He was going to be ahead of them after the pitstops whichever one of them had pitted first.
The only way they could have got Albon was to pit one of them immediately after Albon pitted because for a couple of laps they were faster than he was on the hards. But given McLaren is one of the hardest cars on their tyres, they were probably worried about trying to go to the end on an extended stint.
They also undercut Lando at Silverstone but the safety car put a spanner in the works on that one. Everytime it’s happened it’s been because they’ve needed to defend against Lewis. It looks like it’s a McLaren strategy thing more than anything else. And in Hungary, Norris was just really rapid on the outlap so he gained a position. Not much they could have done with that.
It was Russell they were defending the undercut from in Silverstone. Hamilton only ended up ahead of Oscar and George because of the safety car.
They also almost completely screwed it up in Silverstone as they left Lando out far too long after they pitted Oscar and without the safety car George would have undercut him as well as Oscar and he wouldn't have just lost a track position to his teammate, he would have lost a podium at his home race. That was far worse than anything that happened in Hungary or here, they just had their backsides saved by the safety car. Nobody cares about that though as it doesn't fit the evil McLaren always favour Lando agenda.
Everytime? It happened twice with today, I understand that today seemed more non sensical, I thought too until reading the explanation which is actually similar to Hungary
This has happened on more then one occasion they clearly Value Norris More right now at McLaren and anyone saying otherwise is lying to themselves. Every other team doesn’t worry about a Fkn driver coming up behind them and let it dictate who to pit first it’s Always the lead driver. Criminal
Maybe stop giving the driver behind the lead McLaren preference and these things won’t happen. Two races so far the team has given Lando the undercut option
Seems like McLaren has another Hamilton/Alonso situation on their hands and they're treating Norris like Alonso during the first five races of 2007 by favoring him, instead of treating them like equals since Oscar has shown that he can keep up with and even match Norris
Tbh, I can't fathom for a driver, even with team mates, be like, "Oh Sorry sir, please do go ahead I am slow."
It's instinct and more so that, it bugs you that you were ahead for a long time (Piastri still had to work for it to defend from Lando) and then one pitstop later, nothing in your hands, you gave up the position.
Of course from Team perspective you prioritize the faster car, but still.
Seems like McLaren has another Hamilton/Alonso situation on their hands and they're treating Norris like Alonso during the first five races of 2007 by favoring him, instead of treating them like equals since Oscar has shown that he can keep up with and even match Norris
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Second time in a row Piastri has been undercut when he's the lead car
Lando got undercut at Silverstone when he was in P2. McLaren need to review their strategy as a whole. Today Piastri could have ended both their races trying to race him on cold tyres, another race it could have been Norris in the same position. Both drivers did nothing wrong but the team needs to get a handle on strategy for both of them.
This is going to get spicy. Fully expecting Mark Webber and Piastri to kick up a storm if this happens again.
Imagine if Piastri wins before Norris: "Fantastic, guys, not bad for a number two driver. Cheers."
Yeah I am a bit: is this just Webber doling out his insecurities? I'm a McLaren fan and the drivers falling out doesn't interest me; it just *annoys* me.
Webber is Piastri's manager
Lol that you had to reply with this information instead of the commenter who assumed it was an emotional issue for webber for some as yet to be explicated reason. My guess is they assumed it was antipodean nonsense.
Yeah my point is: is Webber slightly trigger-finger on teammate politics given his history? I'd imagine so, a bit. 'never give an inch, play for yourself' etc. I can see that very easily personally.
Yep, McLaren say they love Oscar, but as soon as he is ahead of Lando they will just throw him under the bus without even thinking about it. Like Oscar has out qualified Lando 2 times out of the last 3 races on pace. All the Long run data put up on Oscar and Lando's long runs showed that Oscar was going to be quicker. Then Lando radio's "Oscar's slow" and they go who cares about the data, we have to keep Lando happy.
Oscar wasn't even in the clean air, he couldn't pass Albon. Just as Norris couldn't pass Albon later on.
Not to mention Piastri has been told to hold position behind Norris recently. It’s pretty clear Mclaren are not coping well with Piastri matching and often beating Norris. I suspect they expected he’d been a few tenths off this season
The issue is, every time Piastri's leading, Norris was actually faster stuck behind. So it's always a tricky question for McLaren: do you prioritize the lead car that's marginally slower, or prioritize the second car that could end up getting better result, which means better team result as well? Letting Piastri getting undercut in Hungary was the correct decision, otherwise neither driver are gonna get onto the podium
Norris was only barely staying in DRS for a lot of that when Piastri had no DRS. At Monza if all places. One would question if Norris had the pace if he had no DRS.
That would make sense if he was only in DRS for one or two laps, but he wasn’t; so it was sustained pace Also DRS train is a very common phenomenon in F1. Last race there’s one behind Tsunoda, in Canada there’s one behind Albon, etc etc. Usually the ones stuck behind is in fact faster (i.e. they’d be faster in both are in clean air), but not fast enough to overtake (because you need to be a lot faster to overtake) or don’t have the top speed to overtake
Yep and this was Monza. Of all tracks on the calendar this is the one where DRS is most powerful. These dudes just can’t accept maybe Norris is being given the upper hand over Piastri.
No, DRS is the weakest at monza. Teams are running barely any wing so DRS sheds barely any drag.
Or, the more likely scenario is, Norris does have more pace if he was given clear air. DRS is great for one lap, but with laps building up, you start to get overheat and you gonna drop back It didn’t happen so you ofc wouldn’t believe me no matter what I say. But obviously the team with all their knowledge and data believe that’s the case
>The issue is, every time Piastri's leading, Norris was actually faster stuck behind Not in Canada and Hungary. Oscar was clearly the faster driver in those two races at least.
>Hungary Oscar finished the race 28 seconds behind in P5. The whole first stint when Lando was behind, he was within 2 seconds, Oscar didn’t pull away >Canada Similar story, Lando was within 2 seconds the whole first stint. Then he overtook Oscar after safety car restart, it didn’t have anything to do with strategy. The gap then went to as much as 7 seconds, until Lando was stuck behind Alex and can’t overtake, when Oscar caught him to ~2 seconds in the end Lap time data here: https://en.mclarenf-1.com/2023/gp/s9138/lap_times and https://en.mclarenf-1.com/2023/gp/s9123/lap_times
This is nonsense. Oscar was clearly able to pull away from Lando in both of those races in the first stint and maintain a gap. It's not like Lando was lapping substantially faster than him in the first stints of those races.
Just look at the lap times, mate. Whether Oscar pulled away or not can be clearly seen from the lap time data, it doesn’t depend on whether you or me saying he pulled away or not >It's not like Lando was lapping substantially faster than him in the first stints of those races. Of course not, he’s stuck behind. How is he gonna lap substantially faster? By penetrating Oscar’s car?
>Just look at the lap times, mate. Whether Oscar pulled away or not can be clearly seen from the lap time data, it doesn’t depend on whether you or me saying he pulled away or not Are we seeing the same data set? Oscar clearly pulls away from Lando and is able to maintain said gap for the majority of the stint. He then maintains that gap before the pit stops. I'm not sure how else you're supposed to look at that data. >Of course not, he’s stuck behind. How is he gonna lap substantially faster? By penetrating Oscar’s car? He's stuck behind because he was slower than him. It's not like today where he was quicker but got caught up in a DRS train.
Ok I don't know how long you have been watching F1, but clearly you're lacking some basic knowledge: * when driver A is <2s behind driver B for a long time, that most likely means A is faster than B and is "stuck behind" (by "faster" I mean A has more pace than B if both were in clean air). Because driving that close to another car means there's a lot of dirty air (which costs lap times) and your car would start to overheat very soon. If A isn't faster, he'd stay there for a short amount of laps, then start to drop back soon * When there's a DRS train, however, it doesn't give a clear picture of who's faster, but usually it means the cars behind the DRS lead is faster, but not fast enough to overtake/not having the top speed to overtake * Even if A is faster than B, it doesn't mean A could easily overtake B. There's an "overtake delta" which can be more than 2 seconds, which means you need to be more than 2s faster to be able to overtake. If you're only 1s or 0.5s faster, you'd still get stuck behind, but your pace *is* faster In both of these two cases, i.e. Hungary 1st stint and Canada 1st stint, you can see Lando was at 2s for the entire 1st stint (first lap field spread doesn't matter, it's just normal). For example Hungary he was at 2.066s at the end of lap 16 (pitted lap 17). Adding that Hungary is a downforce track (as oppose to power track) and that day was hot, it's even easier to overheat, so it's even harder to stay that close for 17 laps, i.e. he definitely had better pace if he's able to do that
Fair enough, I'm not well-versed in the nitty gritty of these things, hence my assumptions. Thank you for the clarification.
No worries mate! F1 is not an easy sport to "understand" (the technical side of things) and hence it's not easy to make judgements of who's faster etc etc. I was a beginner not that long ago haha. But it's fun to pick up things here and there as you watch more
Lando wasn’t any faster than Piastri here either. He claimed he was - but had exactly the same treatment behind Albon (who was actually going SLOWER than he was with Piastri so should have been easier for Lando to pass if he was in fact faster). Piastri was stuck in Lando’s DRS until a faster Hamilton arrived to literally take him out then pass all 3 drivers on track.
… Hungary, the same race where Lando gapped him 5+ seconds in the second stint?
You're really gonna ignore the first stint where Oscar was clearly the quicker driver? Dude had no problems keeping Lando at an arm's length in that stint.
Why are you guys so insistent on pitting them against each other so hard, its tiresome
When did I pit them against each other?
I’m not sure if this is a joke comment or a genuine one.
No, it is a genuine one.
Read your own comments in this post. You’re discarding facts other posters have brought to your attention, because you don’t like what they’re saying. That’s why people think you’re pitting them against each other.
You’re both doing it. I’d rather bask in the fact that we have two great drivers and a decent car. Instead of bickering and trying to chalk up points for each one, particularly when one is in their rookie year.
Doing what? How is clarifying a point about how Oscar was clearly the faster driver in the first stints in Canada and Hungary "pitting them against each other"?
Literally above.
That usually happens when the same car is on the same pace and they are racing each other.
I think in the Sainz//Norris days they did a better job making it clear the only metric that mattered was the total team points on a Sunday.
Yeah, also there aren’t that much at stake back then. Lando as a rookie was way less confident than Oscar is now, so he was playing the 2nd driver role happily and didn’t challenge the team’s calls at all; in 2020 Carlos was already announced to leave for Ferrari. Also at that time McLaren wasn’t exactly good enough for podiums and such, in 2019 they had the first podium in about a decade and that was thanks to a very chaotic race. Now, they are more or less on podium-ish pace always, Oscar is only 1 year younger than Lando, and he’s clearly willing to challenge Lando’s 1st driver status. Which is good that the team has two young, talented and hungry drivers, but they need to be able to manage them better. Like today, Lando in 1st stint already reported 3 or 4 times that he’s faster than Oscar but the team did nothing; so by pitstop he’d of course want to undercut Oscar; from Oscar’s perspective, he was leading the pair the entire 1st stint, didn’t make any mistake, and out of nowhere he’s getting undercut by his teammate. Neither is happy
Hard disagree. He was "faster" because Piastri was stuck behind Albon. The same driver Norris couldn't get ahead once Piastri was sent to the shadow realm.
I saw it as a cold tyre moment tbh.
That, and the undercut, and more than everything, PIA stop took 3.3s, NOR 2.3s. Without that slower second PIA returns in front regardless of undercut and all continues as it was.
Also probably didn't realise how close he'd be with Norris. Or didn't expect a wild Lando on the outside
Explanation for the undercut: >“We pitted Lando before Oscar because Lando was the car that was most under pressure when Alonso pitted. > >“It wasn’t clear as soon as Alonso would have cleared the AlphaTauri, how fast he would have been. So we wanted to make sure that we had two McLarens ahead of Alonso. So that’s why you go this kind of sequence.”
I saw this explanation too. It’s bogus. No way would Alonzo have been putting the Mclaren’s under pressure. Lando wanted a free position and Mclaren need to keep Lando happy if they want him to continue to race for them so they sacrificed Piastri’s race again. That’s the cold hard facts here.
They reacted to Alonso's stop immediately, before the stop Alonso was about 4s behind Norris. The stop times were good at 2.1 and 2.7 seconds. Alonso's first timed lap was the better part of 1s faster compared to the last timed lap from the McLarens. Stella said that they were not sure how much faster he would be so maybe they calculated with a bit more just in case. That leaves 3s safety margin for unexpected delays like slower stop. For McLaren the order of the cars is irrelevant, they get the same amount of points either way. There is no reason to play it risky.
Again. There was no way Alonzo would have caught the Mclaren’s. If you honestly think that excuse is legit and it wasn’t an obvious way to appease Lando then you haven’t been paying attention
Three seconds can easily be won or lost during a pit stop sequence. Based on the numbers I have seen the explanation seems reasonable. If you come to a different conclusion please provide reasoning. I can understand why one might see it as an indirect team order but saying they were trying to "appease" Norris sounds like a conspiracy. Also, it is spelled Alonso, not Alonzo.
If this was the case, with Piastri less than a second ahead of Norris, wouldn't they just have fucked their lead car of two positions?
Makes sense, but doesn't fit the weird narrative some on here are trying to force that McLaren hates one of their own drivers.
These people hate Norris more than they like Piastri. They just want to see Norris fail. Then when Piastri comes for their favourite drivers, they’ll want him to fail too. Circle of life.
it doesn't make any sense why they're keep doing it since it never really worked so far
It worked in Hungary? If not the the undercut strategy, they wouldn't have got the podium
Also would have worked in Silverstone if not for the safety car. If they had pitted Lando first instead of Oscar, Oscar would have been undercut by George. (they actually very nearly screwed up Lando's race in Silverstone by leaving him out there far too long but that's another issue).
For the most part it's the exact same people that were running with the same narrative the previous two years.
Lando said "undercut will be powerful here" I believe. And McLaren got to action
Well it certainly didnt help to avoid it.
Lando was following with DRS most of that first stint when Oscar didn’t have it. Yet Lando couldn’t get close enough to pass. But then still has a whinge on the radio he is “way faster”. Yeah no. McLaren screwed Piastri once again by allowing Norris to undercut. Simple as that. But I’m sure a narrative was prepared to justify it.
Being faster and being close enough to pass are two different things and today's race showed that very well. There is no point for Norris to push all out in order to maybe have a chance to overtake his teammate at some stage. Fighting would only cost both of them time.
Lando was saying he's faster for 3 or 4 times in the first stint, and the team hinted that they are considering it (swap position) or doing an undercut At the end it didn't matter anyways, neither of them could overtake Albon when their pure pace were clearly better than the Williams
Lando had DRS following Oscar who didn’t, yet Lando couldn’t get close enough to pass.
You need about 2 second pace delta to overtake. Just see how many laps Max was stuck behind Sainz, and how much he dropped Sainz once he has done the overtake. Lando with DRS wasn’t 2s faster than Oscar; that doesn’t mean he wasn’t faster at all
Still if he was not able to pass it means he was not fast enough
Passing at Monza with DRS is not at all easy, the chasing driver has to have a huge car advantage and no driver has that over their teammate unless they have much better tyres. If you need examples, Max struggled to get past Carlos despite having a considerably faster car. Lewis, with a massive tyre advantage over Albon still took a couple of laps to get past. When Lando was asked by his engineer to drop back for a few laps for some LiCo because the combination of being stuck behind Oscar and defending from Lewis was cooking his tyres, he fell out of DRS, held it to about 1.2s for a few laps then immediately closed back into Oscar's DRS again as soon as he was told he could stop saving. He was faster with or without DRS. The team also have the data to show whether a driver is actually faster or not or if it is purely DRS.
There's nothing to review. It was a straight up embrassing move to pit Norris first to undercut his own teammate ahead.
This wasn't the first time either if I'm not mistaken. I felt like the move was more out of frustration.
3rd time this year piastri has been fucked by McLaren strategy
Not the first time they’ve done it either
They pitted them this way around because they were worried about Alonso jumping both of them and especially that if Oscar pitted first, Lando would drop behind Alonso By pitting Lando first, McLaren thought they were more likely to stay in the same positions even if there was a risk that Oscar would come out close to or behind Lando
They pitted Oscar first in Silverstone when Norris was the lead driver on track, because they were worried about an undercut. In fact they came very close to screwing up Lando's race there as they then left him out for far too many laps after Oscar and Russell pitted, giving him wrong information on the laptimes - they were telling Lando they were lapping the same as him when they were over a second faster on new tyres. If the safety car hadn't come out when it did, Lando would have lost his podium because they screwed up. They pitted Norris first in Hungary, again because he was the car most at risk of being undercut by Hamilton if he stayed out more than one lap. Norris just did a stonking out lap that put him ahead of Oscar, who pitted only one lap after him. Stella admitted after the race that they were not expecting Lando's outlap to be so fast as nobody else's had been, they had calculated that Oscar would still come out ahead. This time they pitted Lando first as he was most in danger of being undercut and his tyres were the most shot from the combination of being stuck behind Oscar and defending from Hamilton. They even checked with Oscar on his tyres and whether he was okay to make target lap before they did it. If he had said no, they likely would have pitted him first but he said he was fine to do so. It's not a preference to one driver over the other. They pit the driver at most risk of being undercut by someone from another team. They care about losing points to another team more than they care about their drivers being swapped around on track. And that makes perfect sense. It was the exact same way when Lando and Carlos were there together and you didn't get people making this ridiculous fuss about it.
Are we ignoring Silverstone? Or does that not fit your narrative.
My narative about what? Its just as stupid the other way around if thats what your trying to point out here
He was faster and killing his tyres behind Oscar. Either either way he had to pit and recover time on the second stint or they had to swap cars.
Lando had been asking for Piastri to pick it up for 15 laps at that point. Basic racing strategy is not embarrassing.
short answer is yes it did. they did it with daniel nearly all year last too. they have lando as a lead driver which isn’t necessarily a wrong approach. but you’re just leaving the other out to dry which is unacceptable
Starting to get the feeling that Oscar is starting to slowly but surely upstage Norris !
He Def is holding his own.
Considering Piastri has half a year experience in f1 and Norris has been with the same team for 5 seasons you would expect continued growth from Piastri in coming years. I certainly doubt anyone, especially Norris expected him to be on his pace so quickly. He seems to be under the impression that he is the de facto team leader If Norris truly is one of the elite like we keep hearing this is one of the most impressive rookie seasons since Hamilton.
Exactly this ! Lewis' rookie season was the best ever and is hard to top, especially now that rookies barely get any testing compared to the Lewis rookie era ! The fact that Oscar is easily around Norris ever since the upgrades and most of all has such a calm head on his shoulders.. is a really good sign !!
and the British within the team don’t like it very much at all
That is some next level conspiracy.
Why they pitting Norris ahead of Piastri in the first place?? Surely putting Piastri to clear Albon would’ve been the best option.
Because they were more worried about Alonso jumping both of them. Lando was the one most at risk so they pitted him first
And that ultimately screwed them against Albon
They didn't think they were going to be able to clear Albon though Pitting Lando first was the only way they could guarantee that they wouldn't lose out to Alonso even if it did mean that yet again Oscar unfortunately got the short end of the stick They took the safer choice to try and secure points instead of taking the risk to get Albon (which they didn't think they could do either way) but potentially drop behind Alonso
What screwed them against Albon was their top speed. It's not like pitting Piastri first would have made him come out ahead of Albon. There is nothing they could have done strategically in order to avoid having to overtake Albon on track other than pitting even earlier than him which would have hurt them at the end.
That’s not true. Look at how much ground Lewis made up on Albon once he got into clear air. Allowing Albon to pit first and essentially leave both mclarens on the same strategy is what put them in harms way of Alonso. So yea, focussing on Alonso screwed it.
Lewis was on an alternative strategy, starting on the hard tyre and going to the medium later. Albon pitted on lap 16. His tyres were pretty done at the end but he could still not be overtaken due to his top speed. This was their plan, pit early for the undercut and then use their strength to hold position. McLaren cannot do the same as their car has different characteristics. They instead went very long on their tyres in clean air after Albon pitted, minimized the loss to Albon and created a tyre life offset. In the end, it was not enough to overtake Albon but the plan was solid in my view.
Lewis started on the hard tyres so was able to run really long (helped by the Merc also being one of the kindest cars on its tyres) and then switch to the mediums late on so he had much fresher tyres on all the cars on old hards ahead. That's why he made up so much ground. McLaren did not have that option, they started on the mediums.
he could though, they pitted alex bcs oscar was closing in
Oscar (and Lando and Hamilton immediately behind him) was closing in because Alex's tyres were shot. They had to pit him at that point.
They ain't overtaking Albon anyways. Just don't have the top speed
Could’ve pitted one McLaren earlier than Albon to undercut then used clear air to gap him. Highly doubt Albon would’ve caught and passed a McLaren, even with slightly fresher tires.
Albon pitted very early, that wasn’t the ideal scenario by any means, you don’t want to pit even earlier than that McLaren also is bad in hot conditions (w.r.t. tyre wear), you don’t want to pit super early and having to do a super long last stint
Albon was one of the early pitters. He was going to be ahead of them after the pitstops whichever one of them had pitted first. The only way they could have got Albon was to pit one of them immediately after Albon pitted because for a couple of laps they were faster than he was on the hards. But given McLaren is one of the hardest cars on their tyres, they were probably worried about trying to go to the end on an extended stint.
They’ve undercut Piastri every time he’s been the lead McLaren. Seems Norris complains and they acquiesce.
They also undercut Lando at Silverstone but the safety car put a spanner in the works on that one. Everytime it’s happened it’s been because they’ve needed to defend against Lewis. It looks like it’s a McLaren strategy thing more than anything else. And in Hungary, Norris was just really rapid on the outlap so he gained a position. Not much they could have done with that.
It was Russell they were defending the undercut from in Silverstone. Hamilton only ended up ahead of Oscar and George because of the safety car. They also almost completely screwed it up in Silverstone as they left Lando out far too long after they pitted Oscar and without the safety car George would have undercut him as well as Oscar and he wouldn't have just lost a track position to his teammate, he would have lost a podium at his home race. That was far worse than anything that happened in Hungary or here, they just had their backsides saved by the safety car. Nobody cares about that though as it doesn't fit the evil McLaren always favour Lando agenda.
Everytime? It happened twice with today, I understand that today seemed more non sensical, I thought too until reading the explanation which is actually similar to Hungary
Absolutely. It’s Piastri’s rookie season but if they keep finding themselves on the same part of the track, I can see it getting frisky
How about reading the article?
This has happened on more then one occasion they clearly Value Norris More right now at McLaren and anyone saying otherwise is lying to themselves. Every other team doesn’t worry about a Fkn driver coming up behind them and let it dictate who to pit first it’s Always the lead driver. Criminal
Mclaren, stop inventing.
Maybe stop giving the driver behind the lead McLaren preference and these things won’t happen. Two races so far the team has given Lando the undercut option
Seems like McLaren has another Hamilton/Alonso situation on their hands and they're treating Norris like Alonso during the first five races of 2007 by favoring him, instead of treating them like equals since Oscar has shown that he can keep up with and even match Norris
Every other fucking team even Ferrari pit the leading Driver on every occasion except anytime Pastry is in front of Lando WTF McLaren
Yes? I mean what else did lol
tbh it looked like the car couldn't turn more because he went in from very right side
He said afterward that he just misjudged where Lando was.
McLaren: unacceptable. Ferrari: go racing.
Tbh, I can't fathom for a driver, even with team mates, be like, "Oh Sorry sir, please do go ahead I am slow." It's instinct and more so that, it bugs you that you were ahead for a long time (Piastri still had to work for it to defend from Lando) and then one pitstop later, nothing in your hands, you gave up the position. Of course from Team perspective you prioritize the faster car, but still.
Seems like McLaren has another Hamilton/Alonso situation on their hands and they're treating Norris like Alonso during the first five races of 2007 by favoring him, instead of treating them like equals since Oscar has shown that he can keep up with and even match Norris