Collins urges McLaren to ditch strategy calls by committee

McLaren has been the form team since a major car upgrade in May brought Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri their first race victories. But despite several chances to add to that tally over the summer, decisions on strategy have cost them.

At Silverstone, for example, the wrong call on when to pit and a poor tyre choice for the last stint cost Norris the win and favoured Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton.

Speaking on the James Allen on F1 podcast, Sky Sports F1 TV pundit and former F1 strategist Bernie Collins determined that McLaren needs to be more ruthless and not make high-pressure strategy decisions ’by committee’.

“I think that’s part of the issue with McLaren. When you’re asking a driver continuously what tyre he wants, you slow down the decision process naturally,“ said Collins.

“The more independence you can have for the people making those decisions, the quicker those decisions will be naturally. And you know, a bit of the Norris stop lap thing is when he’s so focused on whether it should be a soft, medium or hard tyre, he’s not thinking whether it’s intermediate or dry.

“Actually, the first question needed to be, ‘Which is the right lap to put on the dry?’, and let someone else deal with the other decision. And those are the teams that work the best together, when you’ve got this trust and independent thinking.”

Collins also doesn’t buy the line from McLaren this summer that they are still ‘learning to win’ after many years of being uncompetitive since the Hamilton/Jenson Button era in the early 2010s.

“Not really,” she reflects when asked on the topic. “Strategy in the midfield is as tough as strategy at the front.

“Some will agree or disagree, but you’re still fighting for every position, every point. McLaren in the past have been very good at strategy. I think there’s a little bit of movement of people there, a little bit on their pit wall.

“The people that you’re playing against change. So as you’re a midfield team or a lower midfield team, you’re competing against certain teams and you get to know how they react and how aggressive they might be.

“And as you move up, that changes and obviously the level you’re fighting against changes. I spent every race that I worked on analyzing every decision that everyone else made. And I feel like I had a pretty good idea why Red Bull…