Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri voice frustration at McLaren’s strategy

Lando Norris, the championship leader, has decried the McLaren team strategy error at the Qatar Grand Prix that allowed Max Verstappen right back into the fight and forced a three-way battle at next Sunday’s title-deciding finale in Abu Dhabi. Verstappen won the race in Doha after McLaren chose not to pit their drivers under a safety car early in the race. It was a costly error that gave Verstappen the lead and the win. Norris could finish only fourth and his teammate Oscar Piastri, who was equally unhappy with the team, was second. Related: F1: Verstappen wins Qatar GP as three-way title race goes to Abu Dhabi finale – as it happened Norris had been 24 points ahead of both Piastri and Verstappen going into the weekend but now leads Verstappen by only 12 points and Piastri by 16. “Obviously not our greatest day, not our greatest weekend,” said Norris, who believed McLaren should have pitted Piastri and him when Verstappen and the rest of the field were called in. “Both of us should have done. I would have been had over either way, because we would have double-stacked and potentially I would have lost time. A bit of time. I wouldn’t have lost a position, I don’t think.” Piastri, who showed superb pace as he tried to hunt down Verstappen, was asked to describe his level of frustration with the team. “Pretty high and I think that’s saying quite a lot, given the last few races I’ve had,” he said. “Clearly we didn’t get it right today, which is a shame, because the whole weekend went very, very well. We had a lot of pace. I felt like I drove well. So yeah, it’s pretty painful.” However, the Australian and Norris conceded the team would review the decision and address it before the finale in Abu Dhabi. “I put myself in this position. I’m still happy,” said Norris. “It wasn’t our finest day, it wasn’t my finest weekend in terms of driving and putting things together. But that’s life. Everyone has bad weekends. I take it on the chin, we’ll take it on the chin, and we’ll see what we can do next weekend.” Piastri said: “I think we made a wrong decision today. I think that’s clear. It’s not like the world ended. Obviously it hurts at the moment, but with time, things will get better.” McLaren received a double disqualification at the last round in Las Vegas and the team principal, Andrea Stella, admitted they had to improve. “The drivers are doing an exceptionally good job,” he said. “But over the last couple of races, from a team point of view, we have not been in condition to capitalise on the good work of the drivers and the potential we have in the car. We have to acknowledge as a team that our drivers have all the reasons to be disappointed.” McLaren have faced questions for allowing their drivers to race one another all season, rather than prioritising one to seal the title, but Stella confirmed they would not be changing their approach or employing team orders at the season-deciding race. “We will confirm our racing approach, but certainly what I can say is that if any of the drivers is in a condition to pursue the quest to win the title, then we will respect this,” he said. “There will be no call which excludes the other drivers when the other driver is in a condition to win. “Whatever call we make in terms of using the collaboration of our drivers, we will have to follow some of our fundamental principles, which are foundational to our approach. We want to be fair to our drivers, we want to race with integrity, and we want to race in a way that doesn’t surprise our drivers. Between now and Abu Dhabi, there will be a further conversation with Lando and Oscar.” Verstappen, who had trailed ­Piastri, the then championship leader by 104 points after the Dutch Grand Prix on 31 August and had appeared to be out of contention, was enormously pleased to still be in the title battle at the death. “This year we just had a really tough first half of the season, as everyone knows, but to still be in this fight, I think we can be really proud of it,” he said, “because in the middle of the season at some point it was almost not like you lose motivation, but it’s just you don’t really see a way forward of actually winning again in this season.”