Why Red Bull didn’t play the “back up” card with Verstappen — and why it probably wouldn’t have worked
Max Verstappen did what he had to do at lights-out in Abu Dhabi: pin Norris to the wall metaphorically, own Turn 1, and control the pace. From there, the race morphed into chess. McLaren split its tyre compounds — Lando Norris shadowing Verstappen on mediums, Oscar Piastri the outlier on hards — and the strategic subplots started writing themselves.
By mid-distance Verstappen had what every race engineer dreams of: a fat cushion up front and, briefly, a free stop. Cue the chatter. With a 25-second lead over Piastri and Norris third, Red Bull had the window to pit, slap on fresh tyres and send Verstappen back out just ahead of the McLarens. Max could then back Piastri into Norris, Charles Leclerc and George Russell, potentially tripping up the orange cars and opening the door for the title maths to swing his way.
It never happened. Verstappen stuck to plan A, and the paddock raised an eyebrow.
“I’m a bit surprised that Max and Red Bull didn’t try a little more,” Nico Rosberg said on Sky. Charles Leclerc admitted he expected “a few games” from Verstappen at the beginning or at the end — the kind of cat-and-mouse you use when the trophy is on the line and you’ve run out of conventional rope.
Red Bull’s response? Nothing coy about it. Helmut Marko spelled it out: against two McLarens running different strategies, the trap was more likely to catch the guy in front.
“It was one Red Bull against two McLarens,” Marko said afterwards. “They did a clever move putting Piastri on hards — that’s why we couldn’t bunch up the whole field, because the benefit would have been on Piastri’s side.”
That’s the crux. The so-called “concertina” play only works if you’ve got a compliant train behind you or at least mismatched tyres you can exploit. Hamilton weaponised it against Rosberg in 2016 because he knew exactly what was behind him and how to control it. In Abu Dhabi this time, Piastri — on the robust hard compound, long in the tooth and still happy — was the last driver you’d want welded to your diffuser if you’d just given away track position on purpose.
Marko also pointed a finger at the cavalry that never came. “We were hoping Leclerc and Russell would have more speed,” he said. “Ferrari had five, six laps and then the tyres were gone. As long as [McLaren were] second and third, there was nothing.”
In other words, the backup plan relied on outside pressure that didn’t materialise. If Ferrari and Mercedes can’t hang in the dirty air and force McLaren to defend, your lead car turns from conductor to sitting duck the moment you compress the pack. And if Piastri sneaks by on his stronger tyre, the entire logic of giving up 25 seconds collapses. With so little between Verstappen and Piastri in the points coming in, a Piastri win would have been a torpedo to Red Bull’s title arithmetic.
Inside the Red Bull pit wall, the calculus tilted toward certainty: keep the lead, keep the air clean, keep the story simple. No Safety Cars, no VSCs, no chaos? Then take the race win the straight way and let the spreadsheets land where they land. The team discussed the tactic — of course they did — but it never gained enough traction to outweigh the risk of giving Piastri a swing at the lead on better tyres.
It’s easy to say “roll the dice” from the couch. But there’s a difference between tactics and theatre. Backing up rivals is box-office stuff when you have a rear gunner, or when the tyre picture obviously favours you. On Sunday, neither condition was true. McLaren’s split made them unflankable, and the cars behind weren’t lively enough to turn a bunch-up into a brawl.
If you’re looking for a takeaway, it’s this: McLaren’s two-pronged tyre call boxed Red Bull into the grown-up choice. Verstappen could’ve played the pantomime villain and invited chaos, but chaos had a very real chance of putting an orange car in fresh air. In a title decider, that’s a level of jeopardy even Max didn’t fancy.
Could Red Bull have been bolder? Maybe. Should they have been? That depends on what you value more: the high-wire act, or the win you can bank. On a night without Safety Cars and with a rival holding both flanks, Red Bull chose the latter. And with the way the field stacked up — and Piastri sitting pretty on hards — that was the sensible call, even if it didn’t make for great television.
