Lazy Thoughts on the Qatar Grand Prix

Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room: McLaren’s pit-stop strategy today was terrible. As we discussed Saturday, both Pirelli and the FIA mandated a maximum tire limit of 25 laps and a minimum of 2 pit stops due to wear concerns. When Kick Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg had to retire seven laps in due to a collision, practically everyone used the subsequent safety car for a free pit stop/tire change.

Well, everyone except for McLaren (and one other driver, but he doesn’t matter here). They kept Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri out to maintain track position, a grave mistake.

How so? Because both drivers skipped the free stop, their first one came under green-flag conditions. They lost time. They lost pace. And Max Verstappen was the guillotine blade hanging over both of them.

Then came the pit stop errors on McLaren’s end. Even after that delayed first stop, they entered a frantic recovery mode, only to hand the race (and the title leverage) to Max on a silver platter. The Dutchman is now only 12 points behind Lando Norris, less than a race away from a record-breaking fifth consecutive WDC.

Here’s the real indictment: every mistake McLaren made today was preventable. They didn’t have to pit under green-flag conditions. They chose to, and doubled down with execution errors. You could feel the panic sweating through the timing screens.

And in the meantime, Max did what he does best: waited, pounced, and converted the opportunity to a win. The moment he cleared his second stop, the race stopped being a race and became a slow, orange-colored unravelling.

By the final stint, Lando wasn’t fighting for a win— he was fighting to limit the damage done to his championship lead. He was solidly in fifth place, behind Williams’ Carlos Sainz and Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli.

And that’s the image that should haunt the McLaren crew: your supposed protagonist for the WDC is staring at the back of a mid-tier team and a rookie driver, while the guy chasing him in the standings is up the road, completely unbothered, turning the race into a private time trial.

Credit where credit’s due, though: Oscar refused to let the race die on McLaren’s terms. While Lando’s afternoon shrank into risk management and damage control, Oscar’s became a controlled ascent. He took the same bad hand and played it like someone who hadn’t gotten the memo that this was supposed to be a write-off. From the end of his second pit stop to the wave of the checkered flag, he shortened his gap behind Max from something like 20+ seconds down to officially 7.995 seconds. Shame he’s third in WDC contention now; his driving was solid.

Before we get to the third step on the podium, we need to address Lando’s ascent to P4. He didn’t earn that through solid racing, but rather from a fleeting slip from Kimi Antonelli. The rookie went wide on the penultimate lap under pressure, and Lando jumped at the opportunity to overtake, giving him two extra championship points.

The reaction towards Kimi after the fact was… not ideal, to say the least. What should have stayed in the realm of racing error quickly became a slander campaign. Senior figures at Red Bull Racing (namely, Helmut Marko and Gianpiero “GP” Lambiase) insinuated that he “waved Norris by” in an act of collusion.

That dropped a bomb. Kimi, a 19-year-old rookie fighting to build consistency, was suddenly painted as a public enemy number one in the hunt for Max’s fifth consecutive WDC title. Social media responded accordingly: Mercedes documented over a thousand abusive messages, including death threats. Kimi blacked out his Instagram profile picture as a sign of the pressure.

Despite Red Bull Racing apologizing after the fact, I want to make it clear that what happened shouldn’t have happened in the first place. An intense title fight doesn’t justify throwing the youngest driver on the grid to the wolves to try and score a narrative point. What Helmut and GP said wasn’t merely a “heat of the moment” comment, but rather something aimed at a 19-year-old still learning the ins and outs of F1. Besides, the accusation was baseless; footage clearly showed Kimi struggling in dirty air.

I’ll stop here for now, as I want to write a separate article about young drivers being eaten alive over their mistakes. This Qatar fallout is a symptom of how quickly the sport weaponizes inexperience when it suits the narrative, and not a one-time issue.

In third place is Williams’ Carlos Sainz, a surprise second podium for the Spaniard this season. The mid-level team had no business being this high up on paper again, but Carlos had the momentum to grab it. Williams pulled off one of the most improbable weekend turn-arounds of the year: from a modest P7 on the grid to a fully earned podium. The safety car snafu cleared the path— but it was Carlos who executed everything right to earn it.

And it’s not just a one-off trophy, either. The podium gives Williams a fifth-place spot in the Constructors’ Championship— their best finish since 2017. Why does this matter? Because in a season where mid-tier teams often fade after a flash-in-the-pan showing, Williams ended strong. Sainz transformed unlikely potential into a concrete landmark— more podiums in the second half of the race than the entire Ferrari team. It’s a mark of progress, momentum, and perhaps a harbinger of something more than underdog status.

And now, the next-to-last set of miscellaneous notes this season.

Only two this time, as the race was straightforward aside from the big talking points. That’s all for now. I’ll see you next week for the Abu Dhabi season finale.

-F