Qatar GP: McLaren’s Turn 1 problem has a Verstappen shape
McLaren holds the cards on pace and grid position. Max Verstappen holds the knife between his teeth.
On Sunday night at Lusail, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris know exactly what’s coming. Verstappen starts directly behind them with a championship to keep alive and one obvious opening: the 800‑plus metre drag to Turn 1. If he’s going to swing, it’ll be there.
He said as much after qualifying. “If I don’t pass him [Norris], then he scores more points than me,” Verstappen admitted. “It will be tough… we just struggle a lot on the tyres and we don’t seem to really be able to keep up.” In the Sprint, he said, he was even forced to “cut a corner” trying to live with the McLaren pace late on.
The arithmetic is merciless. After Saturday’s Sprint, Verstappen trails Norris by 25 points. To keep the crown within reach, he needs to beat the championship leader under the lights. That ratchets the risk‑reward dial to the red.
Helmut Marko didn’t bother hiding the intent. Asked by Sky Deutschland whether a Turn 1 lunge was on the menu, Red Bull’s motorsport advisor smiled: when Max lines up alongside you, “most drivers get nervous.” He also suggested Verstappen will risk whatever’s necessary to clear at least one McLaren early, particularly if the race settles into tyre management after lap one.
McLaren has seen this movie. In Las Vegas, Norris tried to squeeze Verstappen off the launch and wound up overcooking Turn 1. Different track, same principle: you don’t leave Verstappen a door ajar and expect him not to walk through it.
Zak Brown is under no illusions either. “For sure, you know he’s going to try and lead into Turn 1,” the McLaren CEO told F1TV. “So I wouldn’t miss the start of the grand prix.” Translation: the opening seconds might decide the title picture.
There’s more to the fight than first‑lap bravery. Red Bull believes it has clawed back meaningful time since the Sprint. “We’re happy with third place, but we’re even happier with the time difference,” Marko said. “We were about half a second behind the whole weekend, now it’s only two tenths.” The RB21 also looked happier on the harder compounds, which matters in Qatar, where stint length limits force aggressive two‑stop strategies and widen the pit‑wall chessboard. If Verstappen can hang in DRS and keep the fronts alive, strategy—and a clean out‑lap—might yet turn the screw on papaya.
There’s also the Piastri variable. The Australian’s weekend has been a reset button. “Piastri has made a resurrection here,” Marko noted, and it’s not hard to see why Red Bull welcomes him being ahead. One McLaren charging off into clean air is a problem. Two McLarens? That’s a chance for Red Bull to play the undercut or force a defensive split at Woking. Either way, it complicates life for Norris, who’s leading the championship but will have to calculate the risk of fighting his teammate wheel‑to‑wheel with Verstappen lurking.
And McLaren won’t be orchestrating a ballet from lap one. Brown has been consistent about letting them race. “Our goal is to make sure papaya wins this championship,” he said. “If we can finish where we’ve started here and just have it be a two‑horse race in Abu Dhabi, that’s our goal. And if they want to reverse positions, that’s up to them, I don’t care.” That’s a brave stance with the reigning champion breathing down your neck and a title to close out, but it’s also unmistakably McLaren 2025: let the drivers sort it out unless the maths says otherwise.
So, what do we actually expect? If Verstappen doesn’t send it into Turn 1, it’ll be because he couldn’t, not because he wouldn’t. The straight is long, the slipstream powerful, and his race almost certainly depends on track position early. If he does get past one McLaren, the race turns cagey: tyre delta, undercuts, and the choreography of two orange cars versus one blue. If he doesn’t, he’ll be made to suffer in dirty air and asked to invent a win later, which he’s done before—but rarely against this version of McLaren.
Either way, the opening seconds are everything. The champion needs a door. McLaren’s job is to slam it without tripping over its own feet. We won’t need to wait long to find out who blinks first.
