McLaren ‘safe strategy’ lacks winning mentality – “Was that it? The highlights of the whole race?” This was the reaction of Oscar Piastri in the drivers cool down room when watching the very brief highlights of action during the 2025 Formula One Japanese Grand Prix. The promise of rain was not fulfilled and Max Verstappen led the field from start to finish to claim his first victory since Qatar last year.
The McLaren pairing came home line astern with Norris holding off a late charge from his team mate to claim second place and retain his lead in the drivers’ title race by one point from Max Verstappen and Lando leads his Aussie team mate by thirteen points.
Verstappen did smash a Suzuka record by being the first driver to win the race four consecutive times in the 35 runnings of the Japanese Grand Prix and his Grand Prix tally now stands at sixty four, some twenty seven behind Michael Schumacher and forty one behind Lewis Hamilton.
Verstappen first for 20 race weekends
This was the world champion’s first pole to chequered flag win since the Emilia Grand Prix in 2024, now 20 race weekends ago. As the lights went out, Verstappen, Norris and Piastri all got away in similar fashion and it was the Red Bull driver who controlled matters until the first round of pit stops.
McLaren made a bluff tyre change call to Norris on lap 18, but it was Mercedes who started the round of pit stops a lap later as George Russell came to switch his mediums for a new set of hard tyres. McLaren decided to cover this off calling in Piastri the following lap.
Red Bull then covered the move from Oscar with McLaren bringing in Norris right behind Verstappen which was surprising given Lando needed an offset in tyre wear to have a prayer at attacking Verstappen. Red Bull were a second slower than McLaren in servicing Verstappen’s car which provided the highlight of the race as Norris hurtled out of the pit lane alongside his rival. The McLaren took to the grass and Lando complained he had been pushed off, yet the stewards decided there was neither an unsafe release from McLaren nor anything untoward from the world champion’s driving.
The second stint largely matched the first, with Norris staying a little closer to Verstappen and Piastri at times piling the pressure on his team mate. Later in the race the Aussie questioned Norris’s pace and suggested he was better equipped to attack Verstappen, but the call to switch positions never came from the team.
McLaren strategy questioned
Questions will be asked as to whether McLaren could have tried something different to win a race they were fully expected to finish 1-2 before the weekend, yet team boss Andreas Stella appears resigned to the fact that the race was lost during qualifying on Saturday.
“We saw that staying out would not have been faster than pitting,” team boss Andreas Stella told Sky after the chequered flag. “We saw that from Russell when he went on the new hards, he was very fast. So clearly there wasn’t the possibility to go for the overcoat – you stay out and try to go faster than the car that pitted. But today it was not possible.”
“With the new tarmac, Suzuka has changed its personality completely the degradation is now very low and this means it gets very difficult to overtake if you are on the same strategy – it takes like 8/10ths of a second to be able to even attack the car ahead,” added the McLaren boss.
Whilst the undercut may have been possible, it would have taken McLaren to make the bold decision to stop Norris first and before Mercedes’ call to switch Russell’s tyres. Yet McLaren are building a reputation in F1 from last year of operating in something of a conservative fashion. Of course the points haul for McLaren for a P2 and P3 is another leap towards back to back victories in the constructors’ championship.
Piastri suggests team orders
Stella was questioned as to why the team failed to consider Piastri’s request to be allowed to attack Verstsappen. The Aussie appeared quicker at times than his team mate ahead and it appeared if anyone could take the win away from Max it would be Piastri, but Stella quickly closed down all talk of a missed opportunity.
“Ive said before it takes about 8/10ths of a second to even be in position to attack the car ahead because you are in the slipstream and as soon as you get within one second, you get a lot of dirty air and the performance drops,” said the Mclaren boss.
“In think its fair that Oscar makes the comment and gives the input to the pit wall but today it was not possible to overtake. He got close on Lando because Lando was mangling his tyres, trying to give it a go to Max, doing a little of going and then bouncing back so I think we need to be careful in judging superficially.”
The only chance McLaren had was to roll the dice when Verstappen pitted and have Norris continue on his medium tyres handheld out for a safety car or a last minute dash on the soft tyre in the closing stages of the race.
McLaren admit being risk averse
Piastri admitted there was a discussion about running long “but I had people behind who had already pitted. We didn’t want to take much risk. I was already starting to struggle with the medium and already we’d gone quite long on the medium. I don’t think going long would necessarily have helped that much, but we’ll look and see if there was something we could have done differently.”
McLaren appear to be playing F1 by numbers and have clearly decided the constructors’ championship is their first objective. A gamble of letting one of their drivers run long and then fit the softs for a sprint finish would have risked the 2-3 finish and the points which that has brought.
Yet with 21 races to go, the 13 point deficit Piastri is suffering to Norris is not significant enough of a gap for the team to throw their weight behind Lando’s challenge alone for the drivers’ championship. Its important for the Aussie that it be he who strikes the next blow in the intra-team battle given as currently he is 2-1 in qualifying and has finished behind Norris twice in three race weekends.
McLaren appear to lack the killer instinct and a ruthless winning mentality usually associated with F1 racing. Yet for now their plan to provide equal opportunity to both of their drivers will remain the same until maybe Max Verstappen takes the lead in the drivers’ title race.
Verstappen breaks impossible record
Verstappen’s stand off with the FIA as Dutch driver wins in Japan
The Dutchman breaks his silence with a strong quip with the Red Bull star returning to press spotlight after FIA boycott, Verstappen’s standoff with FIA eases six months after Singapore controversy: Max Verstappen, the reigning Formula One World Champion, has never been one to mince words. But for the past six months, the Red Bull ace has been careful around the microphones after being sanctioned by the FIA for using profanity on an official F1 broadcast. That moment in Singapore in 2024 had seen Verstappen all but disappear from FIA press conferences, seemingly choosing silence over the risk of further punishment.
At Suzuka, however, the Dutchman returned to the centre of the F1 media room with the same flair he displays on the track. After a blistering pole position for the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix, Verstappen not only re-engaged with journalists, but also made sure his comeback to the press room didn’t go unnoticed – dropping a tongue-in-cheek line that had the assembled media laughing and headlines flying…. READ MORE
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