Oscar Piastri finished 11th in Montreal. Lando Norris did not finish at all. Between them, McLaren scored zero points in a Sunday race they had qualified third and fourth for, brought a substantial upgrade package to, and, for the first two laps at least, were leading.
The explanation could be as simple as an unfortunate strategy call compounded by a reliability issue, but Piastri suggested after the race that it was more nuanced than that. “We were too safe in some ways,” he said.
The reasoning, as Piastri explained, was logical enough on the surface: “We felt like it really didn’t need to be very wet at all for the inters to be a good call.”
The track was borderline. The intermediates were not a stupid choice, as Norris later put it.
Between the national anthem and the formation lap, rain fell on the circuit, and someone in the McLaren garage made the call to switch both cars to intermediate tyres.
But McLaren was the only team in the top 10 to do so. Every other car looked at the same conditions and opted for slicks.
The consequences were immediate.
Norris led at the start, but it wasn’t to last
Piastri pitted at the end of the first lap to switch to slicks. Norris, having taken the lead at the start, stopped a lap later after it became clear the track was not going to deteriorate, and spent the remainder of the race trying to recover from a compromised position. He did not manage it, as a gearbox failure ended his afternoon.
Piastri’s recovery was halted at the hairpin, where a locked front brake sent him into the side of Alex Albon’s Williams. A new front wing and tyres followed in the pits. Albon, his car too damaged to continue, retired on the spot.
Piastri eventually crossed the line 11th, reflecting on what he called “one of those days to kind of forget and go again.”
The question is whether it was.
McLaren has now brought meaningful upgrade packages to back-to-back races and left both without the results the car’s pace warranted. As a consequence, reigning world champion Norris sits 73 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli, with Piastri another 10 points adrift.
While McLaren appeared to be Mercedes’ closest challenger on pace, the Montreal call made the Woking team look like an outsider in the fight.
One factor that makes the decision stand out is how isolated it was. Strategy calls in mixed conditions are often split across the field, with teams hedging in different directions. That was not the case here. McLaren was not part of a divide; it was alone on one side of it.
Piastri had a messy race and finished outside the points
Grand Prix Photo
When eight of the top 10 cars interpret the same conditions in the same way, the outlier inevitably carries more risk – not just because it might be wrong, but because it suggests a different read of the race entirely.
There is also a broader pattern beginning to form. Across the last two events, McLaren has shown the pace to run at the front, but has not converted that into results. Some of that is circumstance, but some of it is self-inflicted.
At the sharp end of the grid, where margins are measured in seconds across an entire race, small strategic misjudgments tend to have outsized consequences. The difference between leaving with a podium and leaving empty-handed is often less about outright speed than about decisiveness in moments like these.
A team that truly believes it can win does not usually put both cars on intermediates when every rival in the top 10 chooses slicks. It backs the car. It backs the drivers’ ability to manage difficult conditions.
McLaren was unlucky, but the call – one that only pays off if the track gets significantly wetter – suggested a team thinking more about what it might lose than what it could gain.
Mercedes was the dominant force in Canada, and there was little to split its two drivers until a power unit failure forced George Russell out, leaving Kimi Antonelli cruising to a record-breaking fourth Formula 1 victory
By
Mark Hughes
On pace alone, McLaren belonged in the fight for victory. But pace and belief are not the same thing, and the gap between them is often where races are decided.
Five races in, with at least 17 still to go, it is too early to rule anyone out. But Mercedes’ form, combined with a resurgent Ferrari, means McLaren cannot afford to play it safe if it is to close the gap and mount a genuine title defence.
Ferrari’s move ahead in the constructors’ championship in Canada means Norris and Piastri are no longer chasing only Mercedes.
The drivers’ standings are equally concerning: Antonelli’s lead is already larger than the maximum gap between Norris and Piastri at any stage of last year’s title fight, and Norris trails not just Antonelli but George Russell, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton.
Canada suggested McLaren’s problem is not a lack of speed, but a creeping hesitation in how it chooses to use it.
In a season already slipping away at the front, caution carries a high cost – and it is one McLaren can no longer afford to pay.
