Why McLaren can afford to be risk-averse

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella looked unusually pensive as he cast his eyes aloft to a Japanese Grand Prix podium on which neither of his drivers occupied the top step, despite having the fastest car on the grid.

His mien was not so much that of one who had lost a £20 note but found a 50p piece down the back of the sofa, though indubitably this was a race weekend which got away from McLaren. No, it was the expression of one facing a dreary schlep through interminable interviews with armchair experts demanding to know why he hadn’t done X, Y or Z to change an outcome which was virtually inevitable from the moment Max Verstappen put his Red Bull on pole position.

If the Japanese Grand Prix made for glum and jejune viewing on TV, imagine the vista from the pitwall as it became manifestly clear that none of the levers at hand could be pulled to any meaningful effect. McLaren’s racing director Randy Singh once said to me, “At the beginning of a race there are as many strategic permutations as there are stars in the sky.” Well, the clouds had rolled in at Suzuka overnight and there wasn’t much to see on that front.

It was George Russell, who acted as the canary in the coalmine by dint of being the first of the frontrunners to pit, at the end of lap 19, who said it best: “When a track has been resurfaced, Pirelli needs to bring softer tyres because the hard can go forever.”

McLaren brought in Oscar Piastri for new boots on the following lap, clocked Russell’s pace on the hards, realised there was little chance of achieving an ‘overcut’ – so keeping Lando Norris out would produce little benefit – and ended up pitting Norris at the same time as Verstappen and Charles Leclerc. While the McLaren pitcrew turned Norris around faster than its Red Bull rivals (Jonathan Wheatley perhaps raised a reflective eyebrow at his new station on the Sauber pitwall), it wasn’t enough to make a difference.

The desperation with which Norris inserted his MCL39’s nose into a gap which was always going to close at the end of the pitlane aptly summarised a race in which any tantalising glimpse of drama was abruptly snuffed out.

Norris was only given a sniff of the lead during the pitlane race

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Naturally Stella’s post-race interlocutors wanted to know why he hadn’t swapped Norris and Piastri round, since the Australian driver had lobbied for this over the radio, suggesting he had the pace to challenge the leader. Another proposition to roll your eyes at, since Norris was managing his pace to avoid the deleterious effects of the ‘dirty air’ in Verstappen’s wake.

With Max in effect dictating the pace, and the rest of the frontrunners waiting to see what would happen to the Red Bull’s tyres, the battle for the lead – such as it was – had more in common with a game of poker. In this case, though, a game of poker in which two of the participants are noisily discussing the contents of their hands.

The fact is that Suzuka has always been a tricky circuit on which to overtake – just ask Alain Prost – and track position is king. Verstappen earned this victory (along with his Denis Dekovic-designed Pirelli baseball cap) by snaring pole position on Saturday.

Mercedes’ split strategy, with Russell pitting relatively early to get off the mediums and Antonelli making them go 31 laps, yielded no net change for either

For McLaren there was no upside to imposing team orders, only downsides. 21 grands prix and five sprints remain this season; why risk a team radio soap opera in the present, and sundry ructions in the coming months, when neither driver had a realistic chance of passing Verstappen on track?

It might have been a different matter in Temps Perdu, when there were between 16 and 20 grands prix a year and opportunities to score were fewer. At this stage in a season with six sprints and 24 grand prix, better to bank second and third place than risk a costly DNF – which, at the risk of incurring the ire of the Verstappen fan contingent, everyone knows is a significant probability if you try to force the issue with the Dutch driver.

While there was no dearth of strategic options, the longevity of the hard compound rendered all but one of the alternatives moot. Of the drivers who started on the hards rather than the most popular medium option, only Lewis Hamilton extracted any meaningful benefit.

Hamilton's contra strategy only gained him one position

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

Still, you have to doubt whether the seven-time champion will have had the spring restored to his step by gaining one position, at the expense of Isack Hadjar, through this strategy. And well done to Esteban Ocon for eking out 32 laps on a used set of hards, but he started and finished 18th.

Mercedes’ split strategy, with Russell pitting relatively early to get off the mediums and Andrea Kimi Antonelli making them go 31 laps (one more than Hamilton managed on the hards), yielded no net change for either. For those trying something more surprising the pickings were similarly thin.

Carlos Sainz went medium-soft with a change at the end of lap 33, but it couldn’t compensate for him losing three grid spots for impeding Hamilton in qualifying. The benighted Lance Stroll, last on the grid, started on softs but gained just one position at the start. He then got off them after nine laps – locking himself into a plodding two-stopper which left him last and lapped.

Indeed, the only contra-strategy ‘winner’ in this race was the much-maligned Jack Doohan, who started 19th on softs and made them last 15 laps, then drove the remainder of the race on one set of hards to cross the line 15th. Behind him, a veritable conga line of frustrated rivals.

If they didn’t already know track position was as important at Suzuka as it is at Monaco, they certainly do now.

Doohan was the biggest gainer in the Japanese GP, going from 19th to 15th thanks to a long second stint on hard tyres

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images