McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has admitted the team made the wrong call at the Qatar Grand Prix when they chose not to pit their drivers under the Safety Car — a decision that cost them what looked like a likely victory and allowed Max Verstappen to take the win.
The Safety Car was deployed on lap seven after a collision between Pierre Gasly and Nico Hülkenberg at turn one, which left Hülkenberg stranded in the gravel. At Lusail there is a 25-lap maximum stint on tyres, so lap seven was the first point where drivers could pit and still complete equal stints to the finish. Most teams took that opportunity; Verstappen and 16 others pitted, while McLaren left race leader Oscar Piastri and team-mate Lando Norris out.
When the race resumed on lap 11 Verstappen, having already made a Safety Car stop, only needed one more visit to the pits. The McLarens still required two stops. Verstappen combined that strategic edge with strong pace and low tyre degradation to get past Piastri and build an eight-second winning margin. Piastri finished second and Norris ended up fourth, behind Carlos Sainz.
The top three in the drivers’ standings after Qatar are: Lando Norris (McLaren) 408, Max Verstappen (Red Bull) 396, Oscar Piastri (McLaren) 392 — leaving all three in mathematical contention going into the season finale in Abu Dhabi.
Stella said factors behind the call included a desire to avoid pitting into traffic and to keep strategic flexibility in case of a later Safety Car. He acknowledged the team effectively ceded a pit stop to a rival who was unusually quick that day and that the choice proved incorrect. “We didn’t want to end up in traffic after the pit stop but obviously all the other cars and teams had a different opinion,” he said. “Everyone pitted and this made our staying out ultimately being incorrect from a race outcome point of view… As a matter of fact it wasn’t the correct decision.”
On lap seven Piastri was 2.6 seconds clear of Verstappen and 4.4 seconds ahead of Norris. McLaren had expected traffic would compromise any immediate stop, but most rivals pitted and that reading proved wrong.
Piastri described his perspective over team radio: he asked what they were doing as he approached pit entry and had to trust the team because the crew has more information about gaps and traffic. He was visibly upset after the race, saying he felt “pretty awful” and that he left the strategy to the team because they had more information. In the press conference he added that, on a personal level, he felt like he had lost a win.
There was debate over whether McLaren’s internal “papaya rules” — designed to manage fairness between their two title-contending drivers — influenced the call. Sky Sports pundit Bernie Collins questioned why a leading Piastri would not pit if he were effectively a standalone car, suggesting hesitation to stack Norris may have been a factor. Martin Brundle disagreed that the papaya rules were central, saying McLaren simply misread the situation and got it wrong. Norris himself dismissed the theory: “It’s nothing to do with that… Red Bull were just as quick today as they were yesterday. They did a better job as a team and made the right call.”
Verstappen’s victory — his fifth in the last eight races — sets up a three-way title fight in Abu Dhabi, with Norris holding a 12-point lead over Verstappen and Piastri a further four points back. Stella said McLaren will review the decision and learn from the mistake as the championship heads to the final weekend.