Since Miami, McLaren has had a car capable of winning in every race. But Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri only managed second place in Imola, Monaco and Barcelona. The Spanish GP was the most recent Grand Prix in which Norris started in the fastest car and ended in disappointment. He cursed the start, but was McLaren up to the competition from Max Verstappen in other respects? Motorsport-Magazin.com puts the race through the wringer in the analysis.
“As a team, I think we delivered a perfect strategy,” said a dejected Norris, defending his team after second place. He took the defeat entirely on himself: Having started from pole position, he was overtaken by Verstappen and George Russell in the first corner. That put him and his McLaren strategists in a difficult position.
What could Norris have done better at the start in Barcelona?
Mercedes never had the pace to win in Barcelona, the team knows that. Russell’s outstanding maneuver in Turn 1, in which he took the lead at the limit of grip, was just a show for him: “I knew the weather said there would be a big headwind in the corner and I knew I could brake very, very late. That caught the guys off guard.”
Without the Mercedes, Norris would still have been slightly ahead on the outside: “If George hadn’t been there, I could have kept first place.” But Norris was the man in the middle. He got nervous and braked early: “If I had braked two metres later, I would have taken everyone out with me. Backing off was the right decision.” Which meant that Verstappen took second place.
Red Bull has a critical strength against McLaren
Russell himself might not have been in the fight for victory, but he would now bring about the preliminary decision. Verstappen immediately overtook him with DRS on lap three. Norris could not keep up and lost five and a half valuable seconds before Russell came in for a stop on lap 15. But why? Everyone agrees that the McLaren was the fastest car on the track. But it was the fastest car on one lap. Not on the straights.
Red Bull and McLaren chose slightly larger rear wings in Barcelona. Despite this, the RB20 had comparable top speeds in qualifying with the slightly flatter Mercedes. Norris was a few km/h behind at the end of both straights. This came back to haunt him when he urgently needed to overtake Russell and couldn’t. “If we had been behind Verstappen after the start, we would have had a good chance,” believes Andrea Stella.
| driver | before T1 | before T10 |
|---|---|---|
| Verstappen | 328.5km/h | 311.1km/h |
| Russell | 329.3km/h | 310.7km/h |
| Norris | 325.3km/h | 307.3km/h |
Verstappen stops, Norris doesn’t: Red Bull & McLaren in strategy dispute
But McLaren suddenly found itself in a confusing situation with Mercedes. They planned the race as an aggressive undercut two-stopper. Russell came on lap 15, followed by Lewis Hamilton on lap 16. McLaren had not expected this. Their strategists had planned from the start to drive beyond lap 20, Stella reveals: “We were very surprised when we saw the people coming on laps 16 and 17.”
“For me, it’s a bit of self-inflicted pain because the degradation here is so high and overtaking is so easy,” Stella wonders. Red Bull’s strategists, however, had calculated differently. As soon as Norris’ first lap without Mercedes obstruction in the open air was seen, Verstappen was brought in. Because he had slipped into 21s times, while Norris was suddenly able to drive in the 1:20s range again.
This only seemed to confirm Red Bull’s preliminary calculations. An aggressive undercut race with early stops would keep Verstappen in the lead and allow him to play to his driving strengths in tyre management in the open air. “At that point we decided to go for the optimal race in terms of strategy and stop laps,” confirmed Red Bull team boss Christian Horner. “McLaren delayed the stop, away from the optimal race.”
Stella does not share Horner’s view: “We thought that would get us back into the race and we focused on our race.” Norris stayed out until lap 23 and, averaging nine tenths per lap, his loss on the newly-tired Verstappen was limited. When he reported that the grip was starting to decrease, the pits immediately brought him in to change to medium.
Viewed in a vacuum, McLaren’s calculation is understandable. The stops at the front were significantly earlier in 2024 than in the previous year. Usually, only the midfield can be driven into such aggressive strategies. It is important to remember that McLaren and Red Bull started the race with different starting positions. Aware of the marginal pace deficit, Red Bull was probably keen to get Verstappen into some fresh air with an early stop.
Why does McLaren Norris stop so late?
At McLaren, the path to the “optimal” strategy was bumpy and marked by Mercedes. On lap 14, the strategists considered an undercut for the first time, and Norris’ opinion was sought via radio. After his answer – “I’m much faster and I’m stuck, let’s do something” – he received the order within a few corners to do the opposite of Russell in front of him. Shortly before the entrance, the team took this back.
With the Russell change one lap later, McLaren ran out of options. Because of the strong undercut here, a position change was not guaranteed even with a 5.37 second slow Mercedes stop. A stop on lap 16 was therefore a risk for McLaren. In the worst case, they stayed behind Russell and the race was over. In the best case, they were trapped in a strategy that was poor based on their own analysis and would have to manage tires at the back. On top of that, Verstappen could react and stay further ahead.
What is important in this regard is that Norris’ pace advantage was not gigantic, on the contrary. At first glance, it might look like a lot when the McLaren comes out of the pits ten seconds behind Verstappen and closes the gap again in the middle stint. But that is due to the fact that the two stopped asynchronously. As a result, they lost and gained time on each other at different points.
If you take all the laps minus in- and outlaps from lap 16, the first without Russell in the picture, Norris only gained around 3.2 seconds over this entire distance. That’s a meager seven hundredths per lap. “The race pace was very similar,” says Stella. “It almost looked as if the parity from qualifying had also applied in the race, where you normally have a certain amount of variation caused by the interaction with the tires.”
How much damage did Mercedes do to the Norris race?
An earlier stop would probably have resulted in a frozen picture of Verstappen and Norris. There is no guarantee that Norris would have been able to get into an undercut position for the second stop. From McLaren’s point of view, it makes sense to convert strong initial pace into a six-lap tire advantage at the first stop.
But that brings us back to Mercedes. Both appeared in front of him again after Norris’ first stop due to the strong undercut. This time they were easy prey for him thanks to the tyre offset. It was only from lap 35, after he had overtaken both, that he started to make up time on Verstappen.
Their presence seemed to drive McLaren further during the second stop. This time, an early stop by Hamilton became a danger. When asked by the pits whether he could overtake Hamilton again, Norris initially answered in the affirmative before adding: “It depends on whether we want to be first or third.” The pits then decided not to build up a tire offset to Verstappen again, but to ensure that they stayed ahead of Hamilton. With only three laps of fresher soft tires, Norris was no longer able to really catch up with Verstappen in the final stint.
All in all, it is difficult to blame McLaren for a clear mistake. While Red Bull was able to drive a perfect race, Norris had to work with more than five seconds lost behind Russell. With a pace difference of a hundredth of a second, that is already too much, and because of Mercedes, only compromise strategies remained. Either stop early and give up the tire advantage, or stop late and have Mercedes in the way again. The biggest help would probably have been a tailwind in turn 1, so that Russell did not risk the starting maneuver.