‘Very poor decision’: McLaren’s F1 title dilemma ‘traced back to replacing Daniel Ricciardo’
McLaren’s nervy title charge following a double DQ can be “traced back to the very poor decision to replace Daniel Ricciardo”.
A leading Formula One commentator believes McLaren’s decision to replace Daniel Ricciardo with Oscar Piastri three years ago may have put the team in the position now where it could be about to lose the unlosable drivers’ championship.
Lando Norris leads the standings by 24 points after he and Piastri were both disqualified from the Las Vegas Grand Prix for illegal skid wear, meaning the McLarens ran too close to the ground by a matter of millimetres.
Max Verstappen won the race and the DQ means the Dutchman is now equal on points with Piastri and within striking distance of what would be a remarkable fifth world title after he looked out of it months ago.
Norris had one hand on the trophy after finishing second in Vegas, but he now must survive the pressure cooker of the Qatar Grand Prix, which includes a sprint race, and the season finale in Abu Dhabi if he is to claim his maiden world title.
Speaking on the F1 hour podcast, veteran F1 analyst Peter Windsor mounted the argument that McLaren would have been better served by having Norris as the team’s clear No. 1 driver so all decisions could be made to priority his bid for the drivers’ championship.
“From day one, I’ve been saying it was a mistake to hire Oscar Piastri as Lando Norris’ teammate at McLaren if you already had Daniel Ricciardo, because that was a really good combination,” Windsor said.
“That was a combination of the ilk of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello or Felipe Massa, or Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.
“They dovetailed really well, they both brought a lot to the team in different ways.
“Had they kept that driver pairing, I think Lando would possibly have clinched the championship by now. But I don’t think they’d be in the situation they are now whereby they’ve won the constructors’ championship.
“Everything’s very equal and that’s the problem. You can’t run two equal cars when you’ve got two equal No. 1s and hope it’s going to be fair and happy for everybody.
“It isn’t. It’s never going to work out.
“If Oscar had a clear No. 2 in the other car, it’d be plain sailing and he’d probably be easy world champion by now in a McLaren. That’s the problem, they’ve cancelled each other out and now we’ve got Max Verstappen sniffing around.
“Either driver (Norris and Piastri) is capable of winning the championship this year but they needed to have a lesser driver in the other car to make it straightforward.”
Windsor believes having both drivers contending for the drivers’ title so late in the season forced McLaren to err by pushing the limits of the car in Vegas, putting the cars at risk of disqualification.
“You would think if any team was to leave a bit of margin when it comes to ride height, on a sensitive circuit, it would be McLaren,” he said.
“On the contrary, because they’ve still got this race going on between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, they cannot do anything but run the cars as near the optimum as they possibly can.
“That’s not a great situation for the team to have been put into, for the engineers or anyone.
“Having this competitive infighting between two sides of the garage, even if you try to have the glad-happy let’s all sit around the campfire and sing folk songs and let’s all be one big family approach that McLaren now have — it never works.
“Because race drivers are super competitive and McLaren shouldn’t be in the position they find themselves in, having to be so on the limit with everything.
“You could say that’s because they want to beat Max Verstappen.
“But at the end of the day, if you’re running Lando Norris’ car, you should be saying, ‘He’s just had two good wins, we’re going to Vegas now, which is a bit iffy. We’ve had a few manhole covers come up, it can be a bit bumpy, the track surface — let’s just not go anywhere near the ride height or any other regulations which could be a problem in those conditions — and we’ll focus on Qatar and Abu Dhabi, more straightforward racetracks.
“We’ll just make sure Lando’s on the podium on Vegas’ — that’s how you do it.
“But they couldn’t do that because Lando’s still conscious of wanting to beat Oscar Piastri.
“It comes back to my original point. All of this stuff, the disqualification of the two cars can be traced back to the very poor decision to replace Daniel Ricciardo.
“It’s a little bit like Ferrari replacing Carlos Sainz. It’s against the grain, it’s not a natural thing to be doing.
“Daniel Ricciardo was a perfect teammate for Lando Norris.”
It’s a bold call by Windsor and a drive-by at Ricciardo, who battled to rediscover his best form at McLaren and struggled behind Norris in a stint that ultimately proved career-ending.
Ricciardo spent two seasons at McLaren in 2021 and 2022 as Norris’ teammate, finishing eighth and 11th in the standings with his victory at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix a lone highlight.
He drove his final F1 race at last year’s Singapore Grand Prix, where he was dropped by the Racing Bulls team.
He was sacked with a year to run on his contract and replaced by Piastri, who has gone from Alpine academy driver to world champion contender in the space of three years.
Speaking to news.com.au, Piastri’s former performance coach Kim Keedle said the dynamic inside the McLaren manage is “actually really well managed internally, to be honest”.
“Even externally as a fan, fair play to McLaren being able to have two extremely good drivers fighting for the championship and still being able to keep the culture internally within the team really strong,” Keedle said.
“Of course there’s going to be some tough decisions over the course of a season, and the nature of the beast is only one driver can win, so at some stage, there’s always going to be a disappointed driver.
“But McLaren’s management have done a done a really good job in my eyes in terms of managing that internally. As motorsport fans, it’s great to see two drivers from the same team fighting it out week in week out.”
Piastri has gone six races without finishing on the podium but is still a mathematical chance of winning the championship.
But with his deficit to Norris shaved from 30 to 24 points following the Vegas DQs, Piastri heads this weekend to Qatar, a circuit that he has enjoyed driving at.
“You never say never, and if there’s one thing that Australians love, it’s an underdog story,” Keedle said of Piastri’s title chances.
“Oscar’s very competitive. He’s a very good driver. He naturally likes Qatar, the track. He’s quite strong there.
“He won a sprint race there two years ago, so he knows how to drive this circuit.
“Whilst there’s still a chance, I’m sure he’s gonna put his best foot forward. I’m looking forward to seeing how he goes in Qatar, because he’s normally pretty strong there.”
“Going into Qatar, on paper, yeah, he’s level with Max Verstappen, and that’s never ideal when you’ve got a driver of that quality,” reporter Lawrence Barretto said on the F1 Nation podcast.
“But he’s actually closer to Lando than he would have been without this disqualification, ironically.
“So actually on paper, it isn’t so bad for Oscar heading to Qatar, where he is brilliant. He’s never been beaten by Lando there.
“He is the favourite in the sprint and in the race. And so I think actually he’s probably going to take a little bit of a boost from what’s happened this weekend.”
“I don’t think anything’s gone wrong, in particular for Oscar,” F1 race winner and former steward Johnny Herbert said, speaking exclusively to news.com.au thanks to Vision4Sport, who provide Formula 1 tickets and packages.
“He had his run, his run was going very well.
“But then Lando did start to get under his skin, because his performances did very much improve. And then once those performances start to improve, you then in a typical human way, you start to almost doubt yourself.
“Then you try that little bit harder sometimes and when you try that little bit harder, that’s where sort of little mistakes start to come into play.”
Herbert said he didn’t buy the theory that McLaren have prioritised Norris and made the Brit’s car faster than Piastri’s.
“I know some people have said well it’s more favouring Lando,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s true. It’s unfair to put it that way. But when you do make those types of decisions as a team unfortunately you will create the negativity that’s coming their way at the moment.
“Toto Wolff mentioned that it is something that Papaya rules were always going to come and bite them in the backside at some point.
“It’s the mental side of where it’s just shifted from one side of the garage to the other. Can Oscar bring it back to his side of the garage? Yes, he can.
“But it’s down to him to be able to absorb all the negative energy that’s maybe happening around his side of the car and twist that around and suddenly throw the pressure back to Lando.
“Lando’s had that good run at the moment. He does seem to be driving the best I’ve seen him.”
Aussie reflects on witnessing ‘scary’ fireball crash
Australian Kim Keedle was also the performance coach for Romain Grosjean and was trackside to witness the horror fireball crash at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix that had fans holding their breath before the Frenchman emerged from the flames in scary scenes.
The steering wheel from Grosjean’s car, as well as the shoes and gloves that he wore during the crash, will be on display at the F1 exhibition at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, which opens on Saturday and runs through to the Australian Grand Prix weekend in April.
“It was pretty confronting and scary,” Keedle reflected.
“Romain’s race engineer said to him, ‘Are you OK? And then there was just complete silence on the other end’.
“There’s been a big crash and the car’s on fire so you instantly start to think, This isn’t good. Romain’s either in the car, unconscious and the car is on fire, or worst case scenario is, that he’s possibly died, because that’s not impossible.
“But luckily he came out of that relatively unscathed and obviously it was a relief when I heard he got out of the car and was fundamentally OK.”
Also on display at the exhibition are some iconic cars including a Mark Webber Red Bull and Alan Jones’ 1980 Williams and Sir Jack Brabham’s 1966 REPCO Brabham — two championship winning cars for Australian drivers.
Originally published as ‘Very poor decision’: McLaren’s F1 title dilemma ‘traced back to replacing Daniel Ricciardo’
F1 erupts as genius takes over podium
