Ralf Schumacher brutally calls out McLaren strategy fumble

Ralf Schumacher has not held back in his criticism of McLaren’s strategy blunder at the Qatar Grand Prix. 

McLaren made a costly mistake in deciding not to pit their drivers under an early Safety Car and threw away victory to their main title rival Max Verstappen, who has set up a three-way championship showdown in Abu Dhabi.

After finishing fourth, Lando Norris is only 12 points clear of Red Bull’s Verstappen heading into the season finale, while McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri is 16 points behind after taking second place in Qatar.

McLaren admitted to making an error by keeping their drivers out and the team have been scolded by F1 pundit Schumacher.

"In my view, Stella basically said, 'No, that was my call - I made a mistake.' Full stop. And I honestly don’t understand it at all, because the lead driver gets priority - he’s the faster one. In this case, that was Piastri," he told Sky Sports Germany.

"You absolutely bring him in. That way you’ve covered both options. It’s the ABC of motor racing. You don’t need a PhD to figure that out. That’s why I really don’t get it.

"The engineer needs to take responsibility and decide for his driver based on the gaps. You can’t have debates up front, people talking over each other on the radio - by the time that’s done, they’ve already driven past the pitlane.”

What went wrong for McLaren?

Schumacher believes “something went wrong in the chain of command” and thinks McLaren will have trouble getting Piastri back on side after costing him what looked to be a certain win.

"I think something went wrong in the chain of command," Schumacher added. "There has to be one person who takes responsibility. And I suspect - I don’t want to say it too loudly - but there’s someone there who’s extremely ambitious.

“And in a situation like that, you have to trust the person making the call. If you try to make the call yourself, it’s already over. And once the first moment passed, the second one slipped by as well. It all happened too fast. I think that’s exactly why they missed it. They really need to address this.

“Piastri absolutely should’ve come in - it would’ve been an easy win. And maybe Norris would’ve ended up third, fine. But now he’s even worse off, because Max Verstappen probably would’ve passed him anyway just through the undercut. But it is what it is. They’ve got to sort that out.

"But I think the much bigger task now is convincing Piastri - because they cost him that win - that he’s still too far out of reach, and Max is coming. That now plays into Norris’s hands. That, I think, will be the harder challenge.”