Kravitz: McLaren raised the MCL39 in Austin after sprint crash left them “flying blind”
McLaren rolled into Austin looking like the team to beat. Hot track, high energy degradation, long stints that usually suit the MCL39. Then Turn 1 of the sprint happened.
Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris tripped over each other at the first corner on Saturday, both retiring on the spot. It was costly in points, sure, but according to Sky F1’s Ted Kravitz, it hurt even more where it really stings on a sprint weekend: data.
With only one practice session before cars go into parc fermé, teams use the sprint to fine‑tune ride heights and scrape right up to that legality limit under the floor. Miss that window and you’re guessing. Kravitz says McLaren had to take the cautious route on Sunday, raising the car to avoid plank wear and the nightmare scenario of a post-race disqualification.
“They didn’t get the sprint laps to understand how close they could run it,” Kravitz explained on Sky. “So they left margin. That’s lap time sacrificed.”
At the Circuit of the Americas, margin is expensive. The place is a patchwork quilt of bumps and crownings, and in this ground-effect era, the underfloor is your aerodynamic bank account. Run low and you’re rich in downforce; run too low and the plank tells the stewards everything they need to know. Teams have been burned here before: Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc lost their 2023 results in Austin for excessive wear, and Hamilton fell foul of the same rule again early in 2025. No surprise McLaren erred on the safe side.
The result? A car that didn’t quite have its usual bite. Norris still salvaged second place behind a metronomic Max Verstappen on Sunday, but he never really had Red Bull within arm’s reach after slipping behind Charles Leclerc at the start. Piastri, meanwhile, could only make fifth work by the flag. For a team tipped as favourites, it felt like a weekend that promised a little more than it delivered.
The flip side of McLaren’s caution was Red Bull’s clarity. Verstappen banked the sprint win, and with the extra running he and his engineers dialled the RB into that sweet spot: skimming the track for maximum ground effect without sanding the plank to danger levels. Ferrari and Mercedes looked similarly confident on their ride height calls. McLaren didn’t have that luxury.
This is what makes sprint formats such a minefield. You get one hour on Friday to cover everything: aero sweeps, tyre work, bottoming thresholds, kerb sensitivity. If you lose your Saturday sample because both cars are in the gravel, you’re setting Sunday off the back foot. And at a circuit like COTA, where a millimetre of ride height can be worth a tenth and a half, you feel it.
None of this excuses the clash in the sprint. McLaren’s drivers know the boundaries and, more importantly, the stakes. This is a live championship fight. Verstappen’s current run has squeezed the gap to Piastri, and every lost point — or lost setup run — matters now. The calculus gets brutal in late season: do you go aggressive to find the lap time, or leave a safety net under the plank and trust your race day execution? McLaren chose the latter in Austin, and it framed their whole weekend.
There’s also a wider technical thread to tug on. Several teams have spent the year wrestling with how low they dare run these cars at bumpy venues. Ferrari, in particular, has had to manage ride height conservatively at times to avoid repeat scrutineering trouble, even deploying instructive lift-and-coast to keep platform loads in check on straights. When the cost of getting it wrong is a black-and-white exclusion, engineers become risk managers.
McLaren will argue that second and fifth was the right trade once the sprint went south — bank the points, keep the stewards out of your debrief, live to fight at circuits where you can run the floor closer and cash in. It makes sense. But it also shows how thin the margins are when titles are decided. The team that maximises sprint laps tends to own Sunday’s setup confidence. Austin underlined that in bold.
If you’re looking for positives in papaya, Norris again looked sharp on tyre life, and the car’s balance was there when he needed to push late. Piastri’s Sunday wasn’t spectacular, but given the compromised baseline and the context of Saturday’s hit, it was solid damage limitation. The raw pace to win didn’t quite materialise — not with Verstappen in this mood — but the ceiling is still high. Clean Fridays and complete Saturdays will matter from here.
Next up are venues that pose their own questions on ride height and kerb compliance. Expect McLaren to keep chasing that razor’s edge — closer to the deck, closer to the win — but with Austin’s ghost whispering in the background: better a few millimetres higher than a millimetre too far. In a season where the title picture remains tight at the top, that’s the line they’ll have to walk.
