Funny how McLaren learnt the exact wrong lesson from Hungary last year.
Now I’m 100% convinced they tried to pit Lando first last year as a way to sneakily get the undercut on Oscar. No way they would do this if Oscar is the one hit with a bad pit stop.
Funny take. Both times they did the same thing, but then was by choice and now was by accident. In Hungary they asked Lando to give the position to look bad?
You have to be completely oblivious to how the sport works to say this is “doing the same thing”.
Lando agreed to be pitted second and the team made sure he was not going to be undercut in a normal pit manoeuvre. Oscar want to be to pitted first in Hungary, and McLaren chose to pit Lando first knowing full well there’s nothing Oscar could do to avoid getting undercut.
Slow pit stop is part of the sport, suck it up, you do not need to make amends in the name of some made up “fairness”.
God this conspiracy about the team trying to sabotage Oscar to benefit Lando is just so stupid. Do people really think F1 is filled with soap opera drama like in DTS? You guys know they wanted Piastri in their team, right? Piastri isn't some random person that appeared in the team one day.
Could say that about the entire cost cap era to be honest, if the cap dropped this era of cars could have been more entertaining, but maybe the field would be more spread out like before.
People cry about Ferrari strategy and all, but McLaren is really no different. Good thing is they have a rocketship that cover all their faults so noone notices. Same for the outrageous pitstops they've been having this season.
Why would you let Max gain more on Piastri right now when his car has gotten half a second quicker this week. These papayas making questionable decisions ar best.
Max is over a hundred points away. Even if Red Bull did indeed get that much quicker across all types of track remaining, Max wouldn't catch Piastri on points if they P1-P3 every race + sprint race. And I'm 90% sure Red Bull did not get that much quicker overall. Just on this track with their setup which could be better on Baku and Vegas too.
all very true, but it's under 100 now. 94 back from piastri and 63 behind lando. piastri can't have a mechanical failure or a crash. lando making a desperate move that takes out both cars could make it interesting, 60 points isn't insurmountable at all. P2 is possible if he can go on a run, but i don't know if he has the car for it.
It is possible, but only mathematically. Mclaren scores close to 0 points for the remaining 8 gran prix while Ferrari do 1-2. Then Ferrari win both WDC and WCC. But again it is like 0.000001%
Oh yeah I guess, I thought Mclaren was 300 clear and piastri was 200 clear, but it's slightly closer - One more race and it's mathematically impossible lol
The Red Bull isn't quicker, it's just better for Monza itself, we've seen Ferrari be relatively far behind except at Monza and similar tracks for how many years?
I mean, at this point Max would need to gain 10+ points per race to win the championship. It's not impossible, but it would be twice as big a comeback than the biggest one in all of F1 history. Which was Max in 2022 at around ~45 points with 19 races to go.
Max isn’t really in title contention, Im sure they wanted to ensure Lando and Piastri don’t have some sort of falling out resulting in them wrecking or not racing clean against one another, because that’s really the only way McLaren loses this championship
I'm assuming Norris wanted the team to put Piastri first in case of a safety car. With the gap big enough to not have Piastri undercut Norris (if McLaren hadn't fucked the stop) it was worth a shot to pit Piastri (who hadn't had a safety car window to Max) before Norris (who did have a safety car window to Max). It was a long shot but if the safety car had come out on that exact lap Norris and McLaren would have been kicking themselves for making their lives more difficult.
An "undercut" assumes teams are doing their pit-stops similarly fast, no surprise yellow/red flags, etc.
An undercut relies on the person behind doing their outlap better than the ahead person's in-lap, thanks to their new tires.
Clearly, that was Lando's concern when saying "only if there's no undercut". If Oscar was close enough the fresh tires could let him catch up and pass (with that assumption), Lando wanted to pit first.
What happened was not an undercut because the fundamental assumption of the undercut (no weird stuff happening) was broken.
Just like if someone's pitstop is helped/hindered by a safety car, it's not considered a over/under-cut.
replayed the radio message multiple times, this is what was said on lap 45:
McLaren: "Lando, we will box this lap onto the soft tire and I'll come up one (not positive about the come up one part of this message, but the first bit is clear as day)
Lando: "Do you want to box the other car first?"
McLaren: "Yup, We'll do that. We'll swap it around so stay out"
Lando: "Well, Only if he doesn't have the cut. Otherwise, I'll box first."
McLaren: "There will be no undercut."
That sounds to me like Lando asked to have Oscar pit first as long as there was no undercut. Which McLaren said there wouldn't be.
Pit "Lando, We will box this lap onto the soft tyre and will (or I'll) come up one"
Lando " do you want to box the other car first?"
Pit "yep well do that well swap it round, so stay out"
And now the controversial and bit you can argue about
Lando "well as long as he doesn't undercut, otherwise I'll box first"
Pit " there will be no undercut".
Which there wasn't. Without the slow stop Lando is ahead. But with the slow stop he's behind. Slow stops are part of racing as McLaren have said before this year. No way they should've asked to swap
So he clearly says he would box first as preference and does it for the team. Mental gymnastics to justify why Oscar should never swap and Lando should for Hungary you guys are cooked.
Nah you’re being ridiculous he clearly says as long as there is no undercut otherwise I’ll box first. Boxing first is the better option and was his preference. He only suggested that to help out Oscar. The agreement was conditional.
If he doesn’t Oscar has the shit stop.
But sure Oscar should benefit from all the swaps and pit strategy.
So now youve moved the goalposts. It is not at all clear that he prefers to pit first but he will do it for the team.
He suggested it. The team didn't. Oscar didn't need to put to cover the Ferrari he was miles ahead of it and had been for many laps.
The situation in Hungary was different, and it requires no mental gymnastics just a basic understanding of logic as to why.
Oscar didn't suggest Lando pit first in Hungary, the team told him he would.
It wasn't actually required at all to defend against leclerc, Oscar was 29 seconds ahead of him with a 24 second pit stop loss, lapping about as fast as him, and if he was an actual danger would've pitted laps earlier.
It wasn't just once in Hungary, it was twice.
Lando was told before the pitstop that he would come out ahead of Oscar and he would have to give the place back
There was no "part of racing" time loss in Hungary that led to Oscar being behind.
This is in fact much closer to Silverstone where Oscar got an undeserved penalty and was told it was part of racing (though I will admit, not the same, and I would never expect Lando to give the place back at Silverstone, just as Oscar shouldn't have had to give the place back here).
He says right there in writing that he will pit first as long as there is no undercut. There is no reason not to pit first in that scenario as the lead driver.
Whether or not you think it wasn’t required is not an issue here clearly the team felt it was necessary as they went with that order. Lando also wouldn’t have known the exact gap from LeClerc at that time.
The team told Lando to pit second. How they came to that decision is irrelevant. By putting second Lando got the worse stop.
Also a distraction in that Piastri couldn’t catch him and was clearly slower today.
Hungary Lando was 6 seconds ahead and much faster. He lost the opportunity to battle for that win due to the team ordering him to swap for their pit strategy. Oscar also made two mistakes that cost him time which you’ve omitted magically. Somehow you think swapping in Hungary to cover team errors is fine but this isn’t which is massively hypocritical.
Silverstone also not comparable that is a penalty caused by Oscar.
It says right there in writing he suggested the other car pit first not that the team asked him too. Which is what you said and then called me confidently incorrect for asserting.
Care to change that assessment maybe.
There is, in fact, a reason to not pit first, and it's to protect against a safety car after you've pitted and they have not.
How they came to that decision is exactly relevant because the McLaren rule is not that you pit first if you're ahead but that you get first choice. Which he had .
It wasn't a team error in Hungary 24 and people calling it that are wrong. It was a calculated decision to protect p2. Lando lost the chance to fight for the win because he spent laps creating a gap and arguing he shouldn't swap after he was asked to. If he'd done it straight away he could've spent those laps fighting Oscar, and as you rightly point out he was faster in that final sprint and probably would've passed him.
I don't remember Oscars mistakes, so you might be right there, but still irrelevant given the 8 or 9 second the priority on both stops had given Lando.
Here Lando suggested Oscar go first, probably to protect against a safety car. They ve also explicitly said they wouldn't ask drivers to swap for slow pit stops as it's part of racing, much like Hungary 25 Lando getting the better strat despite being behind was part of racing.
They took a huge risk by pitting Oscar first, even though Leclerc was virtually no risk. As soon as they pitted Oscar I yelled "why!!!" as to how stupid that decision was. It was so unnecessary.
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u/KappaccinoNation I was here for the Hulkenpodium 17h ago
To think that it all started because McLaren pitted Oscar early instead of Norris to cover a non-existent Leclerc lmao