How McLaren split strategy neutered Max Verstappen interference tactics

Andrea Stella has revealed the intentional McLaren tactics that prevented Max Verstappen from backing up the pack in Abu Dhabi.

Verstappen won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but the Dutch driver ultimately narrowly missed out on the Drivers’ Championship trophy as a split strategy from the two McLarens behind prevented him from trying to slow the pace and compromise Lando Norris’ race.

Andrea Stella: A good thing disruption didn’t happen

With Verstappen starting from pole position, the four-time F1 World Champion did need some fortune to win the title. If the Red Bull driver won the Grand Prix, he needed Lando Norris to finish fourth or lower to secure the championship.

With Norris starting on the front row alongside, a straightforward victory wouldn’t be enough for Verstappen, and the expectation was that the Dutch driver would seek to engage in tactics aimed at slowing the pace of the pack in order to keep rival drivers in contention to get ahead of Norris.

However, these tactics never happened, with Verstappen instead streaking away at the front to open up a gap on Oscar Piastri, who took second place away from Norris on the opening lap as the Australian appeared to be trying to keep his own small title chances alive.

The race played out with Verstappen taking the victory, Piastri second, and Norris in third, with no attempt made by Red Bull to try interfering with the McLaren’s races.

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Asked by PlanetF1.com whether he had been surprised by the lack of disruption from Red Bull, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said, “I think Max had said a couple of times before the race that ‘I’m gonna do my race, I’m gonna win it, and I will need just some luck’.

“And I think that’s what he did.”

However, a key consideration was that McLaren had played a card to attempt to prevent Verstappen from engaging in any strategic tactics. This was done by putting Oscar Piastri on the hard tyre, opposite to the medium tyre selected by Verstappen and Norris.

With Piastri overtaking Norris on the first lap, his proximity to Verstappen and ability to stay out on track longer meant that Verstappen simply had to push on in order to ensure he wouldn’t be beaten by the Australian.

“At the same time with the two McLarens, starting with split tyres, it would have made, I think, any attempt to control the race a bit more difficult,” Stella said.

“So I’m not necessarily that surprised that didn’t happen, and I think it’s also a good thing that it didn’t happen.”

The split-strategy ended up proving the right call, neutering Red Bull’s ability to do much about Piastri, particularly as the hard tyre ended up being very competitive.

“Once we saw the result of qualifying, we started to think about what the start tyre would have meant in terms of strategic options,” Stella explained.

“I think everyone entered the race today not clear whether it was a one or a two-stop, but I think everyone was clear that the hard would have been a good tyre.

“If there’s somebody on a hard chasing somebody on a medium, the one on the medium needs to push, and, at some stage, might have to pit.

“We were, if anything, a bit surprised that Max could go so long and so fast on on the medium tyres.”

As for who made the decisive call on the hard tyre option for Piastri, Stella said, “It’s always a kind of a collective decision, because drivers bring their point of view, the strategy team bring the point of view, the race engineers, myself as a team principal…

“Zak actually said he was happy that we were splitting the tyres, so final sign-off.

“So it’s a collective decision which is made through several conversations, it’s not even a single meeting.

“You sometimes have an hypothesis on Saturday. You go, you sleep on it. In the morning, somebody comes like, ‘Have we considered this?’

“The decision was made in the couple of hours before the race.”

A key factor in ensuring this strategy of keeping Verstappen under pressure would be Piastri staying in proximity to the Red Bull driver, which meant his overtaking move on Norris on the first lap was done with cooperation from the British driver.

“We discussed even more than usual that we obviously wanted to have absolutely clean racing on the first lap,” Stella said about the position swap.

“But we also discussed that, with Oscar on hard tyre, not making life difficult for Oscar to take the second place and then try and attack Verstappen.

“It was a strategic option that Lando supported, so it was good and fair overtaking by Oscar.

“But, in itself, this is a scenario that we discussed. So it wasn’t the hardest of the battles, because there was a general interest from this point of view.”

The approach to the race netted Norris the title by just two points over Piastri, a result earned through collaborative teamwork, even with the Australian still having a chance of securing the title himself if some extreme scenarios had played out.

But what was clear was that Verstappen had a clear pace advantage over both of his title rivals, meaning he took a relatively unchallenged win, a fact not lost on Stella.

“It was a good race. It was an interesting race… one-stop, two-stop…the Red Bull proved to be the fastest car once again,” he said.

“They have clearly done a very good job of overcoming some difficulties, from a performance point of view, in the middle of the season, they gave us an enormous challenge to beat them on track.

“Often we didn’t manage to do so, but it’s important that we manage to do it in the championship with Lando.

“So not surprised that they are finishing the season being probably the best car.”

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