A bizarre officiating sequence during Sunday’s Qatar Grand Prix could lead to McLaren losing the constructor’s championship.
Max Verstappen won the race as Lando Norris had to pit from second place to serve a 10-second drive-through penalty for failing to slow under a yellow flag. In the middle of the race, a wing mirror from someone’s car had fallen off and sat in the middle of the main straight for numerous laps.
Race officials simply waived yellow flags at the end of the straight instead of summoning a safety car or calling for a virtual safety car to pick the mirror up. As officials waited to do something about the mirror, Valtteri Bottas ran it over and the mirror broke into myriad pieces.
Those pieces then appeared to cause front tire punctures for both Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz. After the two drivers had tire failures, F1 finally summoned a safety car.
Norris’ penalty happened in the laps where the intact mirror sat on track. He was forced to pit with 12 laps to go and 10th while posting the fastest lap.
As Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finished second and his teammate Carlos Sainz was sixth and Norris’ McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri was third, Ferrari gained nine points on McLaren and now trails by 21 points heading into the season finale in Abu Dhabi on Dec. 8.
