McLaren title challengers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were caught up in safety car chaos in the opening laps of the Qatar Grand Prix.
The safety car was deployed on lap seven after Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg’s car was left stranded on the side of the track after contact with the Alpine of Pierre Gasly spun him round.
Piastri leading the race, and Norris in P3, after Max Verstappen overtook the championship leader at the first corner for second place, stayed out at the deployment while the rest of the grid, bar Esteban Ocon, pitted.
In what appeared to be a major blunder by McLaren, the two drivers were left out and caught up to the safety car before they were able to pit.
Verstappen and the rest of the grid queued up behind the two McLaren drivers at the resumption of the race, leaving McLaren no choice but to keep their drivers out and push hard on the remainder of their stint on their first set of medium tyres.
After the safety car had come in, Piastri nailed his restart and left Norris behind.
Piastri’s restart also appeared to leave Verstappen cold, as the Red Bull star failed to follow Norris as the two Papaya drivers started to open up a gap.
Following the decision to keep both drivers out, Norris voiced his frustration with his team to leave him out behind his championship rival.
“We should have just followed him (Max) in, no? Should’ve went in if car infront was staying out.” – Norris asked his race engineer William Joseph.
However, the reply came back that the team weren’t looking to differ from their original strategy or change their approach with either driver, as Joseph replied: “He (Verstappen) has now lost all flexibility for the race.”
Piastri was forced to stop for his first pit stop on lap 24 due to the maximum number of laps on the same tyres for the Qatar Grand Prix set at 25 to increase the racing excitement.
The Australians’ start was a slow stop of over four seconds. While Norris’ stop of 2.2 seconds a lap late crucially got the Brit out ahead of Fernando Alonso.