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MONZA, Italy — After Oscar Piastri completed his second and final pit stop at Monza and emerged ahead of McLaren Formula One teammate Lando Norris, the Italian Grand Prix looked settled.
McLaren had the race under total control. Piastri had built a decent buffer out front, escaping the DRS threat of the pack behind. Norris had recovered second place by undercutting Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc at the first round of stops.
The drivers were free to race, so long as they followed “papaya rules” (i.e., don’t crash into each other). Once Leclerc and Carlos Sainz completed their inevitable second stops for Ferrari, the McLarens would cycle back into first and second – a big points haul to inflict maximum damage on a bad day for Red Bull.
But just a handful of laps into the second stint, McLaren realized Ferrari wouldn’t be pitting its cars again. With nothing to lose and a potential victory to gain, Ferrari went for the Hail Mary, keeping both drivers out on a one-stop strategy.
While Sainz couldn’t keep the papaya cars back, Leclerc held on for an emotional victory, leaving Piastri and Norris to swallow the disappointment. A race that looked theirs to lose had, indeed, been lost.
“That’s kind of the blessing and the curse of leading the race, or being at the front full-stop,” said Piastri, who led 32 laps on Sunday. “The guys behind you can react to what you do.”
Why McLaren two-stopped Piastri and Norris
The two-stop strategy always looked like the way to go. On a day when the track temperature neared 54 degrees Celsius (129.2 degrees Fahrenheit) for the start, tire management would be a serious challenge. Practice on Friday revealed graining — where the tires fall out of the optimal temperature window, and the surface begins to break up, reducing grip — would be an issue for everyone.
“You basically couldn’t hit the brake pedal because it turned your front left into a 50-cent coin,” Piastri explained. “(One-stopping) seemed like a very risky thing to do.” The one-stop was the quicker strategy, saving more than 20 seconds in the pits, yet it also had the possibility of resulting in a massive drop in pace — known as ‘falling off the cliff’ — when it mattered in the final stages.
McLaren did consider sticking it out at the front to the end. Piastri was asked on Lap 38 if he thought a one-stop was possible. He told his engineer, “I don’t think so. The front left is pretty dead.” He pitted at the end of the lap, allowing Leclerc to move into a lead he didn’t relinquish. Norris acknowledged McLaren “killed the tires a little bit too easily” to make the strategy feasible.
Piastri came out of the pits on Lap 39, trailing Leclerc by just over 18 seconds with 15 laps remaining to make up the deficit. The fresher rubber quickly allowed him to make inroads at a rate of around a second-and-a-half per lap. If maintained to the end, that would have been enough to catch Leclerc.
Leclerc had other ideas. After getting through the graining phase on his set of hard tires fitted on Lap 15, he actually began to pick up pace, including an eight-lap sequence between Laps 35 and 42 that were all within one-and-a-half tenths of a second. From Lap 31 to the end of the race, he didn’t go slower than a 1:23.9s lap time.
McLaren will second-guess the decision to pit Piastri so late. (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
Piastri also couldn’t quite make the progress he wanted. Piastri felt he lost some time passing Sainz for P2. But his bigger gripe post-race lay with Lance Stroll, who he was lapping.
“You had Stroll driving like it was his first go-kart race,” Piastri said. “I don’t know what went through his brain when he saw his blue flag, but that cost another second. I needed that stint to be perfect to win that race.”
That lack of perfection cost McLaren, leaving Piastri 2.6 seconds off at the flag and the tifosi to revel in a famous victory for Leclerc.
Norris and Piastri conceded McLaren was in a tricky position, given Leclerc was quick enough to keep with them through the opening two stints. There wasn’t anything to lose like there was for McLaren. “It was a lot riskier for us to try and do it than it was for Charles,” Norris said. “He made it work, so hats off to them and Ferrari, and himself, because the driving part makes a big difference out there.”
Andrea Stella, McLaren’s team principal, also felt compelled to note just how quick Ferrari was on Sunday. “Ferrari this weekend, they were as competitive as us, at least with Leclerc,” he said. “For us (it was) bad news, because it meant we couldn’t simply cruise in the race. We needed to deal with them.”
The team orders debate
The tension over the radio in the closing stages of the Hungarian Grand Prix, when McLaren instructed Norris to give up the lead to Piastri, has made team orders a regular point of debate with McLaren in recent races. Monza was no different.
Stella said the team had discussed before the race that Norris, then 70 points behind Max Verstappen, was in the better place to win the championship. Yet the McLarens remained free to race on the opening lap, allowing Piastri to complete a brave overtake at the Roggia Chicane on the first lap.
LAP 1 / 53
PIASTRI TAKES THE LEAD!! 😱
The Australian sweeps around Norris at the della Roggia chicane to lead the field!! 👏
Leclerc also squeezes past into second, sparking jubilation in the stands! #F1 #ItalianGP pic.twitter.com/ViptiU4v5v
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 1, 2024
The move stunted Norris and let Leclerc move up to P2. Norris initially said post-race he was surprised by Piastri’s move, as it was an unnecessary risk, but later softened his stance to say there were no issues.“There was no contact,” Norris said. “He did a good job.” Norris acknowledged that Piastri “drove a better race than me” at Monza. “I finished third, and that’s where I deserved to finish.”
P3 was still enough for Norris to take another bite out of Verstappen’s championship lead as the Red Bull driver endured a miserable run to sixth. The gap is now down to 62 points with eight races to go, meaning that as much as Norris may wish to dismiss talk of a title bid, it is becoming increasingly realistic. Discussions about prioritizing Norris will only become more pressing.
Norris said post-race he “would love” to get that full support for the title, “but it’s not up to me.” He highlighted how well he’d been working with Piastri and the general support within McLaren, which is now just eight points back from Red Bull in the constructors’ championship.
“When you’re fighting for a championship, you want every little thing, and I’m doing everything I can,” Norris said. “The best way simply is to just win a race, and I didn’t do that today because of some silly things. This is for the team, not for me.”
Stella was again reluctant to go into too much detail over a potential ‘number one driver’ situation at McLaren, saying it “works well as a headline.” But he acknowledged that the team “could have played with some other variables” at the front if not for Leclerc. “That does not necessarily mean that now we swap positions because this wasn’t part of our agreement,” he added. “It looks a little brutal if you ask a driver who is going to win a race he gained on track that you have to swap positions.
“But we will review all these things for the next races, and if we come to the conclusion together that swapping is the right thing to do, then we will do it.”
The 1-2 may have slipped away from McLaren, yet it did not do an awful amount wrong on Sunday. It still made gains in both championships, and the two-stop strategy was the obvious way to go given the tire struggles. By running at the front and without enough of a pace buffer to Ferrari, McLaren was simply exposed to a gamble paying off.
“It was the right thing in hindsight,” Piastri said. “But everyone is a lot smarter when the checkered flag falls.”
Top photo: Clive Rose/Getty Images
