Peter Windsor couldn’t believe how McLaren performed at the United States Grand Prix. He criticized their choices on his YouTube channel, especially when Lando Norris passed Max Verstappen outside the track limits and blamed the pit wall for this.
Norris had been closing in on Verstappen for several laps, leading to an intense battle between them. On lap 52, Norris finally overtook Verstappen, but it was deemed illegal because he went off the track. This earned him a five-second penalty, and since he couldn’t pull away by that margin, he ended up behind Verstappen in the final standings. With only five races left in the season, this helped Verstappen extend his lead in the championship.
Windsor’s Take on McLaren’s Blunder
Norris asked over the radio if he should let Verstappen pass again, but McLaren insisted he didn’t have to. Windsor thinks this was a big mistake: “There was always going to be argument about that [overtake]. Lando had the quicker car, his tyres were newer by six laps. He still had a couple of laps to go. He was in DRS all the time. Lando would have got him, I’m sure, by the end of the race. I’m absolutely shocked that McLaren didn’t do that,” Windsor said.
The situation was so odd that even Oscar Piastri got involved. Windsor mentioned that Piastri’s engineer told him something strange: “Even Oscar Piastri’s engineer was saying to Oscar ‘oh they’ve told Max to speed up because obviously they think he’s going to get a penalty’. Just ludicrous stuff.” Red Bull wasn’t worried about a penalty; they wanted Max to speed up because of Norris’s penalty. It seemed like both teams were on different wavelengths!
Fans might wonder why McLaren didn’t play it safe and just let Norris give back the position.
Could Verstappen Have Been Penalized?
Windsor also speculated that Verstappen could’ve been penalized too: “It’s possible that Max then would have got a penalty for forcing Lando Norris off track.” But since Norris kept pushing through even off-track, we’ll never know what might have happened otherwise.
What do you think? Should McLaren have handled things differently?
