McLaren would be just a handful of points behind Red Bull in an epic 2024 Formula 1 title battle, had it avoided errors and converted lost victory chances from the campaign’s first half.
Last weekend’s British Grand Prix marked the 12th of 24 races in the current season, with Max Verstappen and Red Bull leading both the championships they’ve won for the last two years, or three in the Dutchman’s case in the drivers’ championship.
Red Bull is currently 71 points ahead of Ferrari in the constructors’ standings, with McLaren third, seven points further back.
But the orange team is currently reflecting on another victory near-miss this season, following Lewis Hamilton’s win for Mercedes in a race that McLaren had led 1-2.
It lost this position in the dry-wet-dry thriller due to three critical pitstop errors: the team not doublestacking Oscar Piastri behind Lando Norris at the first stops, then fitting soft tyres and not mediums to Norris’s car at his second service, where his slide past his pitbox marks and resulting delay essentially made the difference in Hamilton getting back ahead.
PLUS: Repeated mistakes are costing Norris and McLaren too many F1 wins
McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said afterwards that “the near misses is, first of all, a point of view of good news”.
“We didn’t have these kind of near misses until 12 months ago,” he added. “And first of all, we need to look at the positives. We need to look at the fact that the team is in condition to be frustrated [after Silverstone] because we are P3 in the podium with the other driver P4. And once again, the team scored most points, right?
Watch: British GP Race Review – Hamilton Returns To The Top
“So, if we don’t start from the positives, from the building side, we’re going to be the ones that ‘build and destroy, build and destroy’ and we’ll stay always at the same level.”
While it is true that McLaren’s year-on-year performance relative to Red Bull and the other frontrunners is massively better following its consistent upgrade gains since June 2023, had things gone its way in just five races this season, it could possess a GP victory tally of six and not one – Norris’s breakthrough Miami triumph.
The races where McLaren errors – big or small – made a critical difference are: Monaco, Canada, Spain, Austria and Silverstone. In the last named, there are two theoretical different outcomes had it avoided one or both of its…
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