Did McLaren miss a chance to beat Verstappen? Japanese GP data analysed

After spending 53 laps following Max Verstappen around Suzuka, Lando Norris couldn’t help but wonder whether his team could have done more to get him ahead of the Red Bull.

“Maybe we could have tried a bit more with strategy,” he said. “Overcut or undercut – we just [pitted] on the same lap [as Verstappen] for some reason. So there’s some things we’ll discuss.”

Often when one driver is bearing down on a rival they are clearly quicker than but can’t overtake, their race engineers give them the instruction to “box opposite” their rival: i.e. “If they pit, stay out, and vice-versa.”

That didn’t happen when Verstappen and Norris approached the pit lane entrance at the end of lap
20. “Box this lap,” called Norris’s race engineer Will Joseph. In came the McLaren, right in Verstappen’s wheel tracks.

Should McLaren have issued a “box opposite” instruction at this moment, in which case Norris would have stayed out at least one more lap after Verstappen came in? Afterwards team principal Andrea Stella said that the performance advantage from the new set of hards tyres the drivers would take was so great that it’s doubtful Norris could have ‘overcut’ Verstappen by staying out.

“We saw that staying out would have not been faster than pitting,” he said. “We saw that from Russell, as soon as he pitted and he went on the new hard he was very fast.”

There are two potential outcomes of an ‘overcut’ for the attacking driver. Either they improve their pace immediately then pit and come out ahead, or they run much longer, pit and come out behind, then use the advantage of their fresher rubber to overtake on the track.

Stella’s assertion that the latter route would not have worked for McLaren looks entirely correct. For proof of that, consider how little overtaking occured throughout the field on Sunday.

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But what would Norris’s pace have been like on his medium rubber had he stayed out? He was able to draw within 1.3s of Verstappen in turbulence, and would have had clear air ahead of him after the Red Bull driver pitted.

Even though Norris was plainly managing his medium tyres earlier in the stint, McLaren must have been convinced they did not have enough life left in them to find the time he needed to stand a better chance of coming out of the pits ahead of Verstappen.

Stella said afterwards they will review the decisions they took, and they may look at Verstappen’s initial lap times on hards and wish they’d taken the risk. Norris set the fastest lap of the race, a 1’32.988, two laps before pitting. Verstappen’s first lap on hards was only three tenths of a second faster than that, following which he gained almost four tenths on the next lap.

No doubt Verstappen would have leant on his tyres harder had Norris not been behind him at that stage. But that would have brought him within range of the likes of Alexander Albon sooner, potentially negating that benefit.

There is another reason why McLaren might have liked the idea of bringing Norris in on the same lap as Verstappen. As constructors’ champions, they held the prime spot next to the pit lane exit allowing their drivers a cleaner run back onto the circuit.

Norris’s audacious bid to come out of the pits alongside Verstappen came close to working. This bore the hallmarks of a pre-planned move, particularly as Norris must have made a borderline call on how early to release his pit lane speed limiter, as Verstappen suspected.

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But there was one other point in the race where McLaren’s tactics should be scrutinised. Norris’s pit stop immediately followed that of his team mate Oscar Piastri. Should McLaren have pitted their drivers in the opposite order?

Typically, teams have preferred to give the benefit of the ‘undercut’ – pitting first to get onto fresher tyres – to whichever of their drivers is ahead, to reduce the chance of switching their running order through the pits. McLaren brought Piastri in first to cover off the potential threat from Russell.

Should McLaren have brought Norris in first? With the benefit of hindsight it’s easy to point out that, given the time Norris lost in his pit stop, he might have come in a lap earlier and rejoined the track ahead of Oliver Bearman with enough fresh air to attack Verstappen for a lap.

But teams have to make these decisions knowing the time taken for a pit stop can vary. This was the case for Verstappen who, partly because Red Bull were using reserve team members in their pit crew, lost over a second compared to Norris when he came in.

Even so, it says something about McLaren’s priorities that they were more geared up to protect Piastri’s third place than they were to use their best-placed driver to attack for the lead. After all, if they had got Norris into the lead but Piastri had fallen to fourth behind Charles Leclerc, that would have been a net gain of four points for the team.

This is the difference between a team like McLaren, which is trying to optimise the result of both its cars, and Red Bull, who have stated their priority is to get the best result for Verstappen alone. It is therefore a dilemma McLaren are likely to continue facing over the rest of the season, and one which will become more complicated if Red Bull manage to get their second car back up to the sharp end.

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2025 Japanese Grand Prix lap chart

The positions of each driver on every lap. Click name to highlight, right-click to reset. Toggle drivers using controls below:

2025 Japanese Grand Prix race chart

The gaps between each driver on every lap compared to the leader’s average lap time. Very large gaps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan and right-click to reset. Toggle drivers using controls below:

2025 Japanese Grand Prix lap times

All the lap times by the drivers (in seconds, very slow laps excluded). Scroll to zoom, drag to pan and toggle drivers using the control below:

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2025 Japanese Grand Prix fastest laps

Each driver’s fastest lap:

2025 Japanese Grand Prix tyre strategies

The tyre strategies for each driver:

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2025 Japanese Grand Prix pit stop times

How long each driver’s pit stops took:

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