Oscar Piastri’s lightning start handed him early command of the race – control he maintained until a poorly timed safety car changed everything.
The safety car intervention at the Japanese Grand Prix has sparked much debate in the F1 community, particularly among the pundits, as to whether McLaren lost the win themselves or to the safety car.
Here, Rant Sport writer Ella Magyar looks at the pundits’ comments following the controversial Japanese Grand Prix win.
McLaren strategy blunder?
McLaren opted to pit their race leader, Piastri, on lap 18 of the race in order to protect themselves from a possible undercut by George Russell behind.
In his popular post-race notebook, Sky Sports pundit Ted Kravitz claimed that McLaren did the strategy “absolutely spot on, apart from getting extremely unlucky with the safety car right after Oscar had pitted”.
In contrast, when speaking on the F1 post-race show, pundit Jacques Villeneuve claimed, “there was no point pitting first” and “the undercut did not work”.
Villeneuve is slightly off the mark here, as Russell did emerge behind Piastri after the pit stop sequence, actually suggesting the undercut did work.
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Did the safety car cost McLaren the win?
Sky Sports pundit Bernie Collins certainly thinks so.
“Had there not been a safety car, then we do believe, with our strategy genius Bernie Collins, that Oscar Piastri would’ve won the Japanese Grand Prix”, added Kravitz.
Kravitz himself commented that “there’s no way you could’ve known what would’ve happened after that with George Russell closing on Oscar Piastri”.
He continued his piece using the word “possibly” and saying “would’ve had a very good chance of winning”.
Kravitz’s more ambiguous beliefs about the unknown outcome are more accurate.
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My take
Kimi Antonelli was clearly the fastest man on track, even before the safety car came out, and continued to demonstrate that after the safety car.
Yes, if there was no safety car, then he would have some traffic to clear. However, we have seen many ‘motorway’ passes from other cars, and Antonelli demonstrated one himself on Lando Norris.
Russell was off the pace, but with an overcut strategy that Mercedes would have played out with Antonelli, he may have had every chance at challenging Piastri for the win in the end.
Ultimately, none of this matters. No one knows what would have happened without the safety car, and in the end, speculation changes nothing.
Piastri himself said to the media, “Kimi was clearly faster than me”, and “I’m not sure we would have won the race”.
In the end, Piastri put up a strong performance, and McLaren made the right call with the strategy at the time.
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