Piastri plays his part in McLaren resurgence: 2023 Qatar & US GP reports

Amid this season of Max Verstappen domination, there are still moments when the chasers get a glimpse. Ferrari of course finally broke Red Bull’s domination at Singapore before Verstappen bounced back harder than ever to win in Suzuka. In Qatar and the US, it was the respective turns of McLaren and Mercedes to apply some stress to the hitherto dominant combo. “I think it’s partly a reflection of how little development we’ve put on the car of late,” said Red Bull’s Christian Horner in Austin. “We’ve pretty much switched it off and are now full on with next year’s car.” Mercedes in particular is still developing hard. Furthermore, the sprint format – which tends to open up greater randomisation – meant Red Bull could not take Qatar and Austin for granted.

Finishing second in Qatar’s Saturday sprint race was a somewhat underwhelming way for Verstappen to have clinched his third world championship, but that’s just the way the maths and calendar combined. His only mathematical rival, team-mate Sergio Pérez, was taken out of the sprint race, squeezed between an Alpine and a Haas. That he should be racing such cars in a Red Bull just underlined how his early season title challenge had so badly fallen away. That Saturday sprint in Qatar was significant for another milestone: Oscar Piastri won an F1 race for the first time. The rookie McLaren driver had started from pole and led all the way. The medium compound tyres on which he, Lando Norris and Verstappen started made them vulnerable at the start to the soft-tyred Ferraris and George Russell’s Mercedes and it was Russell who took up the initial chase of Piastri, with Verstappen and Norris further back stuck behind the Ferraris.

This was the perfect scenario for Piastri, though his race was made less straightforward by an early safety car, which enabled Russell on his faster-to-warm softs to deprive him of the lead on the restart lap. But those softs only had a range of a few laps before they grained, allowing Piastri to put a straightforward re-pass on the Mercedes a few laps later and to pull away. Verstappen and Norris did eventually find their way by the Ferraris and Russell, but that had taken a lot from their tyres and Verstappen was unable to close the gap to the impressive rookie.

“In the sprint, Piastri won an F1 race for the first time ”

But for the grand prix proper the following day, Verstappen was unopposed. He was aided in this by having run relatively few laps on the medium and hard compound tyres prior to the imposition by the FIA of an 18-lap limit on each set of tyres. This came after analysis by Pirelli after practice which suggested there was a potential problem of sudden deflation because of damage inflicted over the ‘pyramid’ kerbs on the exit of some of the fast corners, see sidebar, left. Eighteen laps per set (including any laps the tyres had already done) meant that the 57-lap race would by necessity be a three-stopper.

With the soft compound deemed to have too short a range, each driver’s strategies were generally based around how many laps their sets of mediums and hards had already done and in this Verstappen had by far the most advantageous prior usage. Complying with the 18-lap limit, his hards and mediums had a total of 71 available laps for the 57-lap race, giving him 13 laps’ worth of flexibility on when he pitted. Fellow front row starter Russell had only six laps of flexibility over the three stops, while Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton was in even worse shape, to such an extent that he opted to start on a set of new softs. He would attempt to use their better traction off the line to lead from his third-place grid slot. In attempting to go around the outside of the dicing Verstappen and Russell into Turn 1, he clipped Russell and spun himself into the gravel trap minus a rear tyre. Russell was spun to the back and had to make a stop for a new front wing. It was a disastrous start for Mercedes and after viewing the footage Hamilton accepted full responsibility and apologised to Russell.

As Charles Leclerc and Fernando Alonso braked to avoid the carnage, the way opened on the inside for Piastri to vault straight up to second from his P6 grid slot. Once he’d pulled himself out of Piastri’s undercut range Verstappen simply gauged his pace to that of the McLaren behind. The McLaren driver was obliged by the age of his tyres to make his first stop on lap 12. This was still too early in the race for a gap to have opened up to drop into and he rejoined behind Valtteri Bottas’s Alfa Romeo. With Verstappen able to use his tyre flexibility to run until the 17th lap, he was able to exit in clear air. His advantage over Piastri thus extended and made his 14th grand prix victory of the year relatively straightforward.

Straightforward, but not comfortable. The intense heat combined with the fact that the 18-lap limit was way before the tyres had lost much performance meant that, with the exception of Verstappen, drivers were absolutely flat-out rather than managing tyres. “It was 57 laps of qualifying,” as Piastri later put it. This took a severe physical toll. Logan Sargeant was forced to retire his Williams through heat exhaustion, Russell and Lance Stroll both later reported they had been on the verge of passing out in the car at times, Esteban Ocon was sick in his helmet. It was, it seems, a little too early in the year to be racing at Qatar.

Piastri was caught in the late stages by team-mate Norris whose request he be let through to chase Verstappen was denied. Russell made a great recovery from his lap one stop to take fourth, showing McLaren-matching pace along the way.

Mercedes brought an all-new floor to Austin, with an aerodynamic improvement reckoned to be worth 0.1sec in simulation but which Hamilton reckoned allowed him to push with more confidence and thereby accounted for more like a 0.2sec improvement. Around the COTA circuit on which he always shines, it was by far the most enthused he’s been about the W14 this year. In Saturday’s sprint event he muscled his way past Leclerc’s Ferrari at the first turn to take up chase of Verstappen. He hung on for a few laps before the Red Bull eased out a gap of 9sec in 19 laps. Leclerc was a further 8sec behind at the flag, the Ferrari’s tyre degradation ensuring its race pace was no match for its qualifying form, Leclerc having qualified on pole for the main event.

“Sargeant was forced to retire through heat exhaustion”

Verstappen had struggled in qualifying and lined up for the GP only in sixth. His provisional pole time was deleted for his infringing of track limits at the penultimate corner. This put Norris on the front row alongside Leclerc, with Hamilton on the inside of row two ahead of Sainz and Russell.

The sprint had shown the McLaren to have much better tyre deg than the Ferrari so it was important for Norris that he get by it as soon as possible if he was to stand any chance of getting out of Verstappen’s reach. The McLaren surged into the lead and was already 1.7sec ahead of the Ferrari at the end of the lap, with Verstappen in fifth directly behind Hamilton. The Ferrari pair were driving to their rear tyre temperatures and were picked off by Hamilton in the early laps, with Verstappen following him through a few laps later.

Although Norris’s lead was 3sec by the time Hamilton was up to second and Verstappen third, they began reeling him in after 10 laps. “We just didn’t have their tyre performance,” rued Norris later. “We were only quick for the first 10 laps.” It was better than the Ferraris, but the McLaren was not the force it had been in Qatar. “The strength of our car is in the high-speed corners,” explained team boss Andrea Stella, “and we know we struggle in the low-speed. So here Turn 11 was our bogey corner, with the bumps making it worse.”

Red Bull brought in Verstappen from 4sec behind Hamilton on the 16th lap and McLaren responded with Norris on the next lap. Mercedes, however, chose to keep Hamilton out, briefly intending to one-stop before thinking better of it after four more laps and bringing him in, rejoining now 7sec behind the Red Bull, such was the pace difference in those four laps between Verstappen’s new rubber and Hamilton’s old.

This Mercedes strategic miscall averted the thrilling prospect of Verstappen going wheel-to-wheel with Hamilton, for now at least. Verstappen continued to chase down Norris who was now at a tyre disadvantage. The pass, when it came, was a beautiful demonstration of close-quarters judgement from both drivers, Verstappen diving down Norris’s inside at Turn 12 but running a little wide, the McLaren hanging on around the outside, wheels almost touching, before Verstappen forged ahead.

“It had been by far Mercedes’ most competitive race of ’23”

Norris initiated the second set of stops on lap 34, with Verstappen responding a lap later and remaining ahead, both on fresh hard tyres. Hamilton’s stop came three laps after Verstappen’s and as he switched to mediums, he was perfectly equipped to set chase for the McLaren and Red Bull. The pass on Norris was dramatic, with a dummy down the inside of Turn 1 paving the way for a pass around the outside of 2. That left just seven laps for Hamilton on his faster tyres to close down Verstappen’s 5sec gap. It was just a little too much to ask of the Mercedes to make up the time lost at the first stops. But it had been by far its most competitive race of the season.

So it was all the more galling that Hamilton’s car should be found to have worn its underfloor plank away by more than the permitted 10% and would thus be disqualified, a fate shared with Leclerc’s Ferrari. Hence Norris was promoted to an official second ahead of Sainz and Pérez.

“We are very disappointed to lose our podium finish,” said the team’s trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin. “Unfortunately, it is one of the pitfalls of the sprint format where we have a solitary hour of running before parc fermé. Without running at a race fuel load in FP1, combined with a circuit as bumpy as this and the parts of the track where the drivers have to put the car during the grand prix, have contributed to the higher-than-expected wear levels. We will go away and learn from this.”