Who slept worst last night: Andrea Stella

“What is McLaren doing?” – That exact line, followed by a “WTF”, is what I wrote yesterday in our internal editorial chat when I saw both McLaren Formula 1 drivers calmly cruising past the pit entry behind the safety car.

Hindsight is always 20/20, of course, but I was surely not the only F1 follower who didn’t understand why McLaren had just opened the door for Max Verstappen to win the Qatar Grand Prix and push the title decider to the Abu Dhabi finale.

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Why McLaren ultimately chose this strategy – that's not even what this column is about. The real point is that McLaren is on the verge of producing what may be one of the biggest fumbles in Formula 1 history.

Looking back: After his home race in Zandvoort, Verstappen trailed championship leader Oscar Piastri by 104 points. That was the equivalent of more than four race wins, and even the most optimistic Verstappen supporters had likely given up on a fifth title in a row.

Three months later, the Dutchman has overtaken Piastri in the championship standings and goes into the Abu Dhabi finale only twelve points behind Lando Norris. A scenario that, from McLaren’s perspective – with all due respect – should never have been possible.

Abu Dhabi 2010: Stella’s “most painful day”

Ahead of next week’s season finale, team principal Andrea Stella will likely face some restless nights. Yes, the twelve-point deficit still means Verstappen cannot clinch the title purely on his own and needs another slip-up from Norris.

But Stella knows what it feels like to lose a championship at the last moment. In 2010, Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso entered the final race in Abu Dhabi with a 15-point lead over Sebastian Vettel. Alonso’s race engineer back then: Stella.

And the story is well-known: While Alonso’s title hopes faded behind Vitaly Petrov’s Renault, Vettel claimed the first of what would become four world championships with Red Bull. Stella himself said a year ago that it “remains the most painful day of my entire Formula 1 career”.

Does that statement still hold true?

Lando Norris, McLaren

At least 50 points thrown away

Probably yes, because from McLaren’s perspective, nothing is lost yet. But the mere fact that an Abu Dhabi 2010 repeat even seems possible for Stella 15 years later is, from a McLaren standpoint, entirely unnecessary.

The Dutchman said in Qatar that he would already be world champion if Red Bull had been as fast as McLaren in the first half of the season. And looking at the list of errors made by the team – and, to be fair, also by the drivers – it’s hard not to admit that Verstappen has a point.

One may agree or disagree, but the fact is that McLaren – looking at Norris alone – has already thrown away at least 50 points through its own mistakes this year.

Even focusing solely on the major issues: Norris lost 10 points for P5 after his crash in Canada. Add to that 18 points lost in Zandvoort, where he retired from P2 with an engine failure, another 18 points due to his disqualification in Las Vegas, and now at least 3 more points lost because of the wrong strategy in Qatar. That alone totals 49 points, without even counting various smaller mishaps.

A similar calculation can be made for Oscar Piastri, which does little to argue against Verstappen’s assessment.

Stella as the symbol of McLaren’s failure?

Mistakes are part of motorsport, and nobody gets through a season of now 30 races (24 grands prix plus six sprints) without leaving points on the table – not even Red Bull and Verstappen.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Still, it feels as though McLaren’s error rate this year is far too high – especially for a team with championship ambitions. Add to that the season-long debate about the “papaya rules”, though that’s a can of worms we won’t open here.

Until now, Stella had been the face of McLaren’s resurgence. Under his leadership, the team won its first constructors’ title in 26 years in 2024, and this season it defended it even more convincingly.

But now, the tide may be turning, and Stella could lose a nearly certain championship for the second time in his career. And unlike back then, when he was “just” a race engineer on the pit wall, he could this time become the symbol of an even bigger fumble than the one 15 years ago.

Or perhaps everything plays out differently and in a week’s time McLaren celebrates a world champion. In that case, Stella might finally banish his Abu Dhabi trauma once and for all.

Who else had a rough night?

By the way: As my colleague Norman Fischer noted a week ago, I, too, had firmly intended not to feature another McLaren personality in this column after Qatar.

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I would have liked to write about Alexander Albon, for example, who has now definitively lost his status at Williams to Carlos Sainz. While the Spaniard has already taken his second podium, long-time “top dog” Albon has now gone seven Sundays in a row without points.

Or about new Formula 2 champion Leonardo Fornaroli, who won the junior title this weekend as a rookie – yet still has no realistic path into Formula 1 for 2026.

The question of how a driver can win the Formula 3 and Formula 2 titles in consecutive years and still not make it to Formula 1 will have to wait for another day. Perhaps next week in Abu Dhabi, assuming McLaren doesn’t give us the next WTF moment.

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