Theory that ‘something clearly’ made McLaren difficult to drive

A theory has been suggested to partly explain McLaren’s awful weekend at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Reigning world champions McLaren endured a weekend to forget in Baku as Lando Norris could only qualify and finish seventh, while teammate and championship leader Oscar Piastri crashed out.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen went unchallenged as he claimed a dominant second consecutive victory to close the gap on the McLaren duo.

McLaren’s perplexing performance in Azerbaijan and the mistakes of their drivers have been in the spotlight.

Sky Sports F1 pitlane reporter Ted Kravitz has questioned whether the unique nature of the Baku circuit, and windy conditions, contributed to McLaren’s lack of competitiveness.

“I just wonder, was there something about the McLaren this weekend that made it really difficult to control,” Kravitz told The F1 Show podcast. “Was it the wind? Is it more effective when the wind goes and takes away McLaren’s lovely aerodynamics?

“Is it that the McLaren is always a bit nervous anyway, something that Lando’s suffered from since the beginning of the season, which Oscar has managed to deal with. Is it maybe the anti-dive braking?

“Something clearly made that McLaren difficult to handle, because Lando and Oscar are good drivers and they both stuck it in the wall.”

Kravitz continued: “I think they were over-winged, I think they had too much wing on it.

“They had the wing that they thought was going to be for the best qualifying performance and allow then to run at the front and hide, and it wasn’t set up for battle really.

“So he couldn’t get out of the train behind Liam Lawson early on. The first stint was a bit of a write-off. They sort of hanged it out as much as they could with the tyre choices and he couldn’t make any progress.

“How fast was the McLaren? That was the big unknown and I guess the big frustration for McLaren. They never really understood how fast they were, or whether they’ve got a problem for the rest of the car.

“Clearly Red Bull have caught up with them. Are they still in front of Mercedes, well they think they are, but they aren’t quite sure. And I’m not certain that Singapore is going to prove it in terms of the car.”

Oscar Piastri not ‘immune’ to mistakes

Analysing the weekend from the driver’s point of view, Sky Sports F1 pundit Jamie Chadwick said Piastri’s uncharacteristically sloppy weekend proves he is not “immune” to mistakes.

Piastri, who jumped the start before crashing out on a disastrous opening lap, still holds a 25-point lead in the championship over Norris, with Verstappen 69 points further back.

“I said Oscar’s bad weekends are never that bad, whereas this weekend was exceptionally bad,” the three-time W Series champion said.

“I think when the car isn’t in the window, when you aren’t able to get everything out of it, you’ve still got to be finishing at least top five and just collecting points weekend-in, weekend-out.

“Up until this point the battle has just been internal and I think that’s relieved a little bit of pressure in a way. Now you’ve got Max coming in, okay he is miles away in terms of points in the championship, but it’s possible.

“As soon as you get a thorn in the side and some external pressure, then that’s when you really need to manage these bad weekends. I was very surprised that Oscar made the mistakes he did.

“A crash in qualifying happens, we’ve seen it happen to pretty much every driver at some point. But a jump start, followed by a mistake in the race. Everything just didn’t feel right.

“He’s been on the back foot for the last two weekends a little bit performance wise and it will be really interesting now to see what he comes back with, because even though Oscar is a cool, super calm, collected character, it doesn’t make him immune to not feeling pressure or making mistakes.”