MPH: Did Piastri really sabotage Norris's qualifying? The paranoia of F1's towing game

Kimi Antonelli’s remarkable victory from the back at Monza on Sunday tended to wash away the equally remarkable events of Saturday when Pierre Gasly stuck the Alpine on pole. Behind that achievement was a colourful, intense backstory of in-team rivalries at the top teams.

Gasly’s pole seemed anomalous but once there, it then seemed equally odd that on race day the Alpine should quickly sink down to its more usual upper midfield level, with Gasly finishing a solid seventh, best of the rest after the usual top four teams Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari.

So what was going on? Recall that in Friday’s column we talked about the potential volatility the enhanced value of the tow might bring? That’s exactly what happened on Saturday. All four top teams had their towing strategies compromised – at Mercedes by a rival, at Red Bull by an incident in Q2 which left it with only one car in Q3 and at both Ferrari and Mercedes by factors related to in-team rivalries between their drivers.

Alpine, by contrast, with a perfectly and consistently synchronised procedure and no ambiguity in the status between their drivers, absolutely maximised a car with that super-powerful Mercedes PU and a very efficient low-drag rear wing. The incidents among the top four teams presented Gasly and Alpine with an open goal on Saturday. The true performance order was restored on race day. That’s all that happened. But let’s look in a little more detail at what went wrong at Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari in qualifying.

The root of what went wrong for both Mercedes and Red Bull was in Q2 when Liam Lawson, on towing duty for Verstappen, was then about to do his own attack lap with a return tow from Verstappen. Just as he began it, he was forced to lift for an errant Oscar Piastri. The McLaren driver was penalised three grid places for the incident but that didn’t help Lawson, who was unable to make Q3 as a result. Which in turn left Verstappen bereft of an in-team towing partner for Q3. He’d have to find a reluctant one from another team. He went out for his final Q3 lap glued to the tail of Lando Norris’ McLaren.

But he was unable to keep up with the McLarens on their out-lap. The McLarens – with their new front wheel rims introduced at Zandvoort – were getting heat into the fronts very well, allowing them hard out-laps. Harder than it was possible for Verstappen to keep up with, his front tyres far more reluctant to reach temperature. “I’m not going to catch them,” he radioed to his team as he reached Ascari. So his attention switched to what might be happening behind him; perhaps there could be opportunity there.

Behind him were the Mercedes pair Antonelli and George Russell, with Kimi trying to maintain the ideal 3s gap to the Red Bull for maximum tow benefit and he in turn placed around 3s in front of Russell. Because he was taking PU penalties and starting from the back, Antonelli was not really going for the ultimate lap but simply trying to tow Russell to pole. But as he approached Parabolica, that nice 3s gap to the Red Bull in front was suddenly eaten up as Verstappen braked hard, trying to induce Antonelli into passing him and thereby stealing Russell’s tow. It was a cunning plan and it might have worked.

But Antonelli resisted and also braked, ensuring he stayed behind. Which meant of course that Russell had to do the same. So the beginning of his lap was badly compromised despite getting the tow from Antonelli up the pit straight. As Antonelli pulled aside, Russell was left trying to get a tow from Verstappen but he was too close, thanks to Verstappen having compressed the distance between them into Parabolica. Too close and you lose more time through the corners than you gain on the straights – which is why Russell’s lap was good only for P2.

They were the cascading consequences for Piastri’s Q2 inattentiveness. Oscar was again the focus in the dynamics of what happened between the McLaren drivers in Q3, which left Norris only ninth quickest. They were supposed to tow each other in each of the two Q3 runs, with Norris towing Piastri on the first of them and Piastri to return the favour in the final runs. Norris did his part, towing Piastri to a time which would stand as third quickest. But as Norris prepared his attack lap he was doubtless dismayed to see Piastri brake too late for Turn 1 and slide straight on across the escape apron, rejoining at a crawl – leaving Norris with no tow. If Piastri had done this intentionally, it was clinically done. But that and Piastri’s penalty left McLaren under-represented at the sharp end of the grid.

Ferrari? We saw the competitive niggle between Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc at Zandvoort and it continued throughout the Monza weekend. That played its part in qualifying as well as the race. It was Hamilton’s turn this weekend to decide the order in which they left the pits and naturally he chose to go out behind Leclerc. In Q2 the plan for Hamilton was to do a multi-lap run, push-cool-cool-push. But Leclerc didn’t want to leave the pits until there was an opportunity to follow another car out – and that delay meant Hamilton was also delayed and there was no longer time to do the planned sequence. His compromised run only just scraped him into Q3. If Leclerc had planned it, it was clinically done but didn’t quite work.