How Red Bull weren’t swayed by McLaren’s Qatar call: “Are you sure?”

Red Bull strategy chief Hannah Schmitz has revealed her colleagues questioned her big call to pit Max Verstappen under the Safety Car at the Qatar Grand Prix.

Verstappen stormed to his seventh victory of the year to close to within just 12 points of Lando Norris ahead of the title decider in Abu Dhabi.

McLaren looked to have the pace to secure a comfortable 1–2 finish in Qatar.

However, an early Safety Car — due to Nico Hulkenberg’s clash with Pierre Gasly — made for an exciting race.

The entire field, besides the McLaren pair and Esteban Ocon, opted to pit under the Safety Car on Lap 7.

With Pirelli forcing all teams to run 25-lap stint lengths (at most) due to safety concerns, Verstappen — and the rest of the grid — effectively saved 26 seconds in race time by stopping and getting one of their mandatory stops done early.

McLaren hoped they had the race pace, in clean air, to pull away and then make use of fresher tyres later.

It didn’t work out, as Verstappen clinched the victory ahead of Piastri, while Norris only finished fourth.

Explaining her race-winning strategy call, Schmitz admitted her Red Bull colleagues double-checked with her when they realised McLaren weren’t stopping.

“Pre-race, that was exactly when our safety car and virtual safety car windows opened, and that was the plan,” Schmitz told Viaplay.

“So, pit both cars if the safety car came out on lap seven. There’s such an advantage to pitting under a safety car when you’ve got to do the two stops that, to us, that was a clear thing we should do. And I guess a lot of the pit lane felt the same.

“But obviously on that in-lap we’re hearing ‘Oh, McLaren are staying out’. Everyone’s like, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure you want to pit?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I really think so!’

“I thought, definitely that’s the right thing to do. And then as soon as I saw everybody else coming in as well, I thought, OK, that’s fine. Although it meant you have no flexibility at all when you make the second stop, just the advantage of gaining that much time.”

McLaren have “difficult situation”

Had McLaren stopped, Norris would have had to queue behind Piastri in the pit lane.

As a result, Norris could have lost out to Verstappen regardless.

McLaren also decided not to split their cars in terms of strategy — a decision which has raised questions over whether they are prioritising fairness rather than trying to win with at least one of their cars.

The poor strategy call hurt Piastri the most, who is now behind Verstappen in the standings, when he should have won the race and thus been ahead.

Schmitz conceded that McLaren had a “very difficult situation”.

“Maybe. I think they’re in a very difficult situation where they obviously want to treat the drivers fairly. And I guess we’re in a position to take advantage of that. So, yeah, I think that will be difficult for them,” she added.

“But also they have a fair amount of pace compared to the rest of the field. And maybe they were hoping they could pull out the pitstop gaps and maybe they were also concerned with kind of doing those maximum 25-lap stints. I’m not McLaren, so I don’t know, but that’s a possibility.”