Did McLaren miss opportunities to shake Verstappen’s control of the Japanese GP?

If you're looking for a pithy summary of how Max Verstappen won the Japanese Grand Prix, two words might suffice: pole position. The hair's breadth 0.012s gap between Verstappen and championship leader Lando Norris - perhaps the difference between being a centimetre wider for one corner or being a blink-of-an-eye quicker on the brakes, turned out to be the decisive factor.

Verstappen, having cut a frustrated figure by dint of his Red Bull RB21's proclivity to understeer in the Suzuka practice sessions, hooked everything up perfectly. He still hated how it felt, believing that he was simply clinging onto the white-and-red edition of his car through the assault course of Suzuka's high-energy corners. Yet he'd corralled the car perfectly, throwing down a statement lap that rather sunk McLaren's attempt to continue the HMS Championship Cruise's voyage.

In truth, it wasn't as simple as his 2023-spec "bag pole position and disappear" victories that ensured that year's championship was in no doubt. His mirrors were conspicuously saturated by two papaya reflections, his rear view resembling the child that drank too much Sunny Delight in the late 1990s. And, although the McLarens tried to nip at his heels throughout, Verstappen was granted the opportunity to do what he's best at: a) maintaining a lead from the start, and b) exerting his control over a race.

If Strike One was qualifying, then Strike Two was achieved by preserving the lead into Turn 1. Verstappen and Norris were both angled towards the centre of the track and their comparable starts once unchanged did nothing but let Verstappen swoop first to cover his rival off. Stall the driver's momentum behind, and there's no way they can attempt to glide around the outside extremities into the first two corners; Verstappen understood the assignment.

He then tacked the requisite one-second margin onto his early lead to ensure Norris could not attempt to counterpunch with DRS. Even while struggling with his upshifts, which were apparently too languid for his liking, he managed to stamp his authority on the race's early stages.

Norris didn't really have an answer in the early stages. The early time he was ceding to Verstappen might have been through a brief spell of tyre saving; one of the trademarks of the Briton's race approaches is that if he can't get the lead on the first lap, then he'll tend towards sipping at tyre life and save it for a flurry of late-stint punches before pitting.

After Verstappen took a stunning pole position and retained the lead on the opening lap, focus switched to strategy to win the Japanese GP

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

But at a resurfaced Suzuka, that wasn't really possible; degradation was so low that the tyres could simply last the distance. Verstappen was in a position where he could push enough to keep Norris at arm's length, nullifying any chance of the merest flutter of DRS assistance. Norris did pick up the pace towards the end of the stint, but only to a degree that took a just over 2s advantage to around 1.3s.

But McLaren knew Strike Three was coming. With no chance of deposing Max on track, McLaren called Norris with the pretence of a "box to overtake" stop - but this was purely an exercise in attempting to put Red Bull and Verstappen off their stride. It was never really going to work; Red Bull isn't some two-bob operation with an inclination to jump at shadows - it's an operation that's used to winning championships with just one car in the reckoning. One might assume having two cars in contention gives McLaren a strategic advantage but, in reality, it's more of a burden when pitted against Verstappen. Red Bull doesn't have to worry about keeping two drivers happy and, in situations like this, it's a strength.

Of course Verstappen didn't pit when McLaren made that call. And, with the two McLarens working as a buffer between the Dutchman and the rest of the order, Red Bull didn't have to worry about having to cover off any drivers behind who had banked on an earlier switch to the hard tyre. McLaren, meanwhile, did.

McLaren felt that it was boxed in to a lap 21 stop, leaving Norris to follow Verstappen in. It was pitstop purgatory; following Verstappen in would do little other than preserve the order, although McLaren at least gave itself a decent chance of getting ahead by doing a pitstop that was a second quicker

The Woking squad's team principal Andrea Stella noted that George Russell's stop for the hard tyre forced its hand to a certain degree, in that it needed to cover him off with Oscar Piastri. Although degradation was not really an issue, the pace of Russell on the new hard tyre was good enough to set McLaren's pitcrew into action at the end of the 20th lap. And, with the possibility of building up a tyre delta with an overcut strategy considered not at all effective, Norris couldn't really go any longer.

Thus, McLaren felt that it was boxed into a lap 21 stop, leaving Norris to follow Verstappen in. It was pitstop purgatory; following Verstappen in would do little other than preserve the order, although McLaren at least gave itself a decent chance of getting ahead by doing a pitstop that was a second quicker. This brought Verstappen and Norris level at the pit exit, although the latter was forced to take to the outside lane given McLaren's position in the pitlane. As the track disappeared, with Verstappen under no obligation to make room for his rival, Norris found himself briefly mowing Suzuka's withered grass on the run to the first corner. Perhaps he attempted to draw the foul and plead the referee for a penalty kick; the stewards were not having any of it.

Not putting Norris on an overcut makes sense; Verstappen would likely have built a larger gap, given his first full lap on the hards was 0.4s up on his final 'proper' tour on the ageing mediums. But there was a chance to play the undercut; Piastri returned to the circuit over four seconds clear of Russell, whose own progress was slightly stunted by the need to clear traffic on his opening efforts with the white-walled Pirellis.

With Verstappen and Norris almost level at pit exit, the McLaren driver had nowhere to go but on the grass to keep his fight up

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Had Norris come in a lap sooner, and assuming similar pitstop times for his own and Verstappen's services from the pitcrew, the extra lap on new boots might have been enough to get the McLaren driver ahead. Ifs and buts - but given Norris's own 0.4s delta between his end-of-life mediums and nascent hards, and the one-second difference in pitlane fortunes, the 1.3s that divided the two could have been overcome by a whisker.

But Stella contended that another risk factor also stopped the team short of going for the undercut: the safety car window. As it happened, Bernd Maylander's regular chariot was not called upon as everyone was well-behaved, but any possible issues between Norris' stop and the indelible fingerprint of an out-of-control midfielder would have hurt McLaren's chances more.

"Lando would have lost positions in a safety car should a safety car be deployed," the Italian asserted. "In hindsight, you don't see any safety cars, and you think 'oh yeah, I might have gone for the undercut', but an undercut attempt comes with some risks. It was apparent that the degradation was low, so I think if you lose position with a safety car, it's lost. I don't think we could have overtaken a Ferrari or a Mercedes today."

Either way, Red Bull was wise to it. Christian Horner stated that the attempted dummy made no sense to Red Bull and saw Norris' stop coming. "[When they] pitted Oscar, it was clear that they were going to pit Lando the following lap, so it was then a matter of covering," he noted.

Back to Norris' pitlane exit excursion and the failed attempt to catch the stewards' eyes. Following the incident, the Bristolian was once again separated from Verstappen by 2s, but he at least inched closer over the second stint to close the gap down to around 1.5s. This was as good as it got; Norris could get no closer to the Red Bull's rear, particularly as his MCL39 struggled versus the RB21 under braking for the low-speed corners. It was a common theme that, through the first sector, the McLaren started to home in - but Verstappen could largely preserve the gap with his stronger approaches to the Turn 11 hairpin and the lap-ending chicane.

Of the two McLarens, Piastri was looking like the racier contender. The Australian, who celebrated his birthday on Sunday, sought to mark his 24th tour around the sun with a second victory of the season. He was solidly within DRS range of Norris and, with the low degradation, scarcely looked to be suffering from the dirty-air effect that usually turns Pirelli's finest into camembert. As was his wont, Piastri began to not-so-subtly request a swap; he believed that he could put Verstappen under more scrutiny compared to the scant wafts of a challenge that Norris had attempted to throw the leader's way.

Piastri hounded Norris late on, but no McLaren swap orders came

Photo by: Peter Fox - Getty Images

He rather demonstrated that by closing to within half a second of his team-mate, and looked to be almost considering a pass into Turn 1 with DRS at the start of the 44th lap, but Norris stayed well clear and Piastri's request appeared to be denied. Piastri backed off, although he started to rally again by the end.

Might Piastri have been able to challenge Verstappen? It's possible; his lap times over the final stint demonstrated a number of tours where he was faster than the Red Bull - albeit to the tune of only one or two tenths. Stella reckoned that about half a second per lap was needed to realistically shape for an overtake, so chances were that Piastri would simply end up in Verstappen's wheel tracks for 10 laps? Either way, the old adage remained true - nothing ventured, nothing gained...

Perhaps McLaren is guilty of repeating last year's conservatism, especially as the mindset of chasing every possible win should theoretically sit within a Formula 1 outfit's DNA. Yet, its driver still leads the title and it sits atop the constructors' order by some margin

Verstappen, for his part, never wavered. He recovered from practice session waywardness to find the tools needed to gather a perfect weekend. That said, he was candid in his admission that the lack of degradation "definitely helped" his case to win - a view echoed by Stella, who suggested McLaren's tyre-kind MCL39 had "no additional qualities" owing to the reduced levels of wear over the weekend.

It was that herculean effort on Saturday from Verstappen that laid down the gauntlet, one that McLaren perhaps chose not to pick up - lest it cut itself on a sharp edge and end up contracting tetanus. Perhaps the team is guilty of repeating last year's conservatism, especially as the mindset of chasing every possible win should theoretically sit within a Formula 1 outfit's DNA. Yet, its driver still leads the title and it sits atop the constructors' order by some margin. It's all about the long run, after all.

Verstappen is just one point behind Norris at the top of the early drivers' standings

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images