Formula 1 News: McLaren’s Season of Missed Opportunities
Ahead of the 12th race of the 2024 Formula 1 calendar, the British Grand Prix, Red Bull’s dominance continues, with Max Verstappen and the team leading both championships they’ve won for the last two years. However, McLaren is reflecting on another victory near-miss this season, following Lewis Hamilton’s win for Mercedes in a race that McLaren had led 1-2.
The orange team is currently third in the constructors’ standings, 78 points behind Red Bull. However, had they converted their lost victory chances from the campaign’s first half, they would be just a handful of points behind Red Bull in an epic title battle.
McLaren team boss Andrea Stella remains optimistic, stating, “the near-misses is, first of all, a point of view of good news.” Despite the frustration, Stella emphasized the importance of focusing on the positives, such as the team’s ability to score the most points and secure podium finishes.
While it’s true that McLaren’s year-on-year performance relative to Red Bull and the other frontrunners is massively better following its consistent upgrade gains since June 2023, had things gone their way in just five races this season, they could possess a GP victory tally of six and not one – Norris’s breakthrough Miami triumph.
Races where McLaren errors made a critical difference include Monaco, Canada, Spain, Austria, and Silverstone. In Monaco, had Piastri strung together all his best sectors at the end in Q3, he would’ve headed eventual winner Charles Leclerc on the grid, grand prix victory practically assured.
Norris might’ve won again in Canada without staying out an extra lap in his overcut attempt to jump both George Russell and Verstappen after his unfortunate safety car time loss. At Barcelona, costly slow pitstops for Norris and the Briton feeling he pushed a tad too hard, too early on his final stint tyres behind Verstappen made the difference more than Russell’s rapid start much earlier.
The next time out in Austria, Norris might have beaten Verstappen without their crash, for which the McLaren driver was judged partly but not “predominantly” to blame by the stewards, as Verstappen was, plus considering his track limits violations.
Assuming McLaren had instead taken all those chances and nothing else changed in the finishing order behind, the constructors’ championship would change based on this model. Red Bull would remain first, but its total would drop from 373 points to 364, with McLaren instead second on 351 – just a 13-point gap between them.
Ferrari would fall to third, 56 points further back, with Mercedes’ position in fourth unchanged but just slightly reduced (214 instead of 221). Had McLaren scored a 1-2 at Silverstone – assuming Norris finished ahead of Piastri as per their order before the first pitstops – the gap to Red Bull would close to just four (361 vs 357), with Mercedes’ total down further to 211.
Applying the same assumptions for these races and their theoretical outcomes to the drivers’ standings, Verstappen would still be in front, but Norris would just be 26 points back in second instead of 84. By way of comparison, at the halfway stage of the 2021 season, Hamilton led Verstappen by just eight points.
In this alternate 2024, the world champion could also have five wins instead of seven, with Norris up to four, Piastri on one and Leclerc deprived of his only victory since 2022. Considering McLaren’s possibly lost Silverstone 1-2, Norris could be just 23 points back from Verstappen.
The current state of the championship highlights the importance of consistency and precision in Formula 1. As the season unfolds, it will be interesting to see how McLaren addresses their mistakes and capitalizes on their opportunities to potentially change the course of the championship.
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