Former F1 TV presenter Will Buxton has called out McLaren’s strategy during the Miami Grand Prix, claiming that the Woking outfit has repeatedly made strategic errors.
Lando Norris had been leading the race at the Miami International Autodrome with Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli in second. But, unfortunately for the reigning drivers’ champion, the Brackley outfit performed a successful undercut.
McLaren reacted and pitted Norris a lap later but, with a slightly slower pitstop than Antonelli’s, the damage had been done.
“We just got undercut,” Norris told 2009 champion Jenson Button in the televised post-race interview. “There’s no excuses other than that. We got undercut. We should have boxed first. I’m gutted to miss out on a win here in Miami, I think it was possible today.
“But yeah, not the pace to get back past him in the end, so we take it on the chin.”
During an episode of the Up To Speed podcast, Buxton argued: “When it comes to strategy, and I’m not talking about papaya rules or anything like that, it seems that too often they either panic and pit when they don’t need to, or they take too long, and they don’t pit when they should have.
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Ryan Pierse / Getty Images
“And it happens far too frequently. And there are far too many occasions when the drivers end the race frustrated because they knew they had the car under them to win, but the strategy let them down.
“That has been a continuous and repeated failure of the team for two and a half years, if not longer. And yet nothing has changed on that side.
“They brought in Will Courtenay from Red Bull, so let’s hope that all of Will’s experience can kind of add to that and ultimately have an effect. But whether they would have had it today, look, as you say, the slightly slow pitstop hampered them a little bit. But it’s great to see they’re in the mix because we need somebody to take the fight to Mercedes every weekend because they’ve clearly got an advantage.”
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