A long wait of 945 days ended for Lewis Hamilton as he won his first race since the 2021 Saudi Arabian GP. At one point, though, the win seemed impossible, with the McLaren cars dominating the track. However, a botched strategy saw McLaren sacrifice their race by not double-stacking their drivers for the first round of pitstops. And now, the Woking team is facing questions from one of their own.
Driving for McLaren in the Formula E series, Sam Bird was a special guest on BBC’s F1: Chequered Flag Podcast. The British driver pointed out three key factors that led to McLaren not winning the race. The most important of them was why did the Woking outfit not bring Oscar Piastri in for a tire change alongside Lando Norris.
“Why didn’t McLaren double stack Oscar [Piastri]? ‘Cause that put him out of place.”, Bird said.
With Norris in the lead, Piastri was quickly closing in on his teammate. But at the end of lap 27, only Norris came in for the tire change, with McLaren leaving Piastri out for another lap. Thus, the Aussie driver’s race was sacrificed to probably boost the winning chances of his teammate.
A late pit stop meant Piastri lost lap time on dry tires in the partially wet track conditions, which helped Norris and the rest of the pack to close in on him. From P2, Piastri dropped down to P6 after his stop and was struggling to catch the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz ahead of him. But this wasn’t the only way McLaren sabotaged their own race.
Sam Bird wasn’t happy with a couple more decisions by McLaren
As pointed out by Bird, three reasons culminated in his employer team losing out on a race win in Silverstone. Aside from a double-stacking failure, Bird was also curious about the timing of the pitstop, given the racing conditions.
Oscar Piastri after the race:
“We need to review what we could’ve done better, cause it wasn’t the right call in the end. We did everything else right, pace was phenomenal”#BririshGP pic.twitter.com/EZl7xH6D8w
— McLaren News | (@McLarenF1_News) July 7, 2024
As the rain hit the Silverstone track, every driver moved from their starting compound to the intermediate tires. A small shower later, the sun shone brightly on the track, quickly drying out all the wet spots. But even with a dry track, McLaren waited for an extra lap before pitting, which did not sit well with Bird.
Finally, Lando Norris‘ decision to put on the soft compound instead of a new medium compound didn’t make sense to Bird either. Per the 37-year-old, Hamilton’s choice of softs perhaps “spooked” Norris, and he wanted to beat him at his own game.
However, it ended up working against the #4 driver as Max Verstappen made small work of getting past him on hard tires to finish P2.
