It was probably only a matter of time. McLaren has pulled off a major blow that confirms what logic had been suggesting for some time. The one-two at the Circuit de Catalunya officially seals the escape of the Piastri-Norris duo in the drivers’ standings—while in the constructors’ championship, all rival ambitions had already been dead for a while. Max Verstappen arrived in Montmeló 25 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri and left 49 points adrift. It’s not yet a definitive surrender, of course, but it’s a strong message in that direction.
This scenario took shape thanks to a perfect Sunday from McLaren and Verstappen’s worst race in which he suddenly seemed to travel back in time by a few years. It’s only right to begin with the papaya triumph, which came (as expected) at the end of a flawless weekend. If the new regulations on flexible wings were supposed to be a game changer, the change seems to have gone in the opposite direction to what rivals had hoped. Of course, confirmation is still needed in the next rounds of the championship, but Barcelona delivered a very clear message.
The McLaren garage managed the 66 scheduled laps without letting themselves be influenced by their rivals’ choices—which, in reality, boiled down to just one man: Verstappen. “At Max’s first pit stop, we understood his strategy would be a three-stopper,” explained Andrea Stella, “but we weren’t worried because we had already seen (with Norris on lap 13) that we were capable of overtaking him on track. However, there was a moment in the second stint when his pace was decisively fast—at that point, we had to ask Lando and Oscar to push harder.”
McLaren wanted to prevent Verstappen from entering the undercut window on Lando Norris and at the same time avoid the risk that an early stop for Lando could end up being an undercut on Piastri. Things quickly settled with the impressive progression of the two MCL39s, which suddenly resumed setting very fast lap times despite both drivers having already completed more than twenty laps on the medium tyres.
Credit must be given to Red Bull for trying everything possible to challenge the front-running duo. “On equal strategy, there would have been no contest anyway,” admitted Christian Horner. So, the team opted for a three-stop strategy (discarded by all rivals before the race), and it worked perfectly, bringing Verstappen to within less than two seconds of Norris with fourteen laps to go.
“For Max, overtaking Lando was impossible, but third place was secure. Then, on lap 54, the Safety Car came out due to a power unit problem on Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes, forcing him to park in the gravel. At that point, Red Bull’s strategists had just seconds to decide whether to call Max in for a new set of hard tyres or leave him out on the softs he had been using for eight laps.”
“Leaving him out meant risking being overrun after the restart,” commented Christian Horner. “We had calculated that there would be ten laps to go after the green flag, but then the procedure took longer and it became six. Our feeling was that a new set of hards was better than a soft set that was already eight laps old and seemed heavily degraded. So we stopped. With hindsight, would we have made a different choice? It’s hard to say. Would he have been passed by both McLarens? Okay. Then would Leclerc have passed him too? We don’t know. You make decisions based on the information you have available.”
The problem is that the choice to return to the track on hards exposed Verstappen to a critical situation, which at some point overwhelmed him. With a clutch issue (that started in the second half of the race), the lack of grip from the hard tyres, and the certainty that he had been wronged by Leclerc, Max received a radio message telling him to give the position to George Russell.
That was too much, and the aggressive behavior thought to be a thing of the past reappeared. In just a few laps, Max unraveled. An ugly move against George Russell cost him a drop from fifth to tenth place, as well as three penalty points on his license. If he incurs another penalty in Canada, he risks watching the Austrian Grand Prix (Red Bull’s home race) from the sidelines. A nightmare scenario that will follow Max Verstappen to Montreal. A bad Sunday.
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