McLaren Qatar Success Brings Podiums and World Records!

[DanM]

I know it’s been a little while since I’ve published a blog for the McLaren Formula 1 team, but at the pace, they are moving up the leaderboard, I could not ignore the unbelievable job the entire McLaren Formula 1 team is doing to put themselves back towards the top of the grid and had to write about it.

In case you haven’t been following along, McLaren has finished on the podium in the last three races, taken two consecutive double podiums, and claimed their 500 and 501st podiums. Lando Norris has also finished on the podium in three races in a row. And last but certainly not least, the pit crew broke the world record for the fastest pitstop. They did it in an unreal time of 1.8 seconds. That’s right! 1.8 seconds to change four tires!

Watch the pit stop here. It looks robotic!

What’s with the resurgence? Well, there’s a lot to unpack there that I’m not privy to, but you can bet that Zak Brown’s unwavering commitment to bringing McLaren back to the top has a lot to do with it. The addition of Andrea Stella has had a major impact on the direction of the team and has seemed to re-energize the entire team. With Oscar Piastri catching on so fast as a rookie, it doesn’t hurt McLaren that they probably have the strongest two drivers on the grid.

If you watched the Qatar race, you heard that Lando wanted to keep pushing to race Oscar, and that mentality kept both McLaren cars close to the Red Bull of Max Verstappen and kept them well ahead of Mercedes to finish 2nd and 3rd. This attitude and how well the car is performing right now put McLaren in an opportunistic space that could see them climb the constructor's championship if all works out.

With 5 races left on the calendar, if McLaren can keep their podium streak alive, they could catch Ferrari. Based on the current performance, McLaren should take the 4th position, but 3rd could be on the horizon and would be great. 

Here’s the scenario:

In the first 10 finishing positions in a race, the driver and team get points. This is how the driver and constructor's championship gets determined.

Position	Points
1st	25
2nd	18
3rd	15
4th	12
5th	10
6th	8
7th	6
8th	4
9th	2
10th	1

Assuming Max Verstappen wins the rest of the races, McLaren can shoot for 2nd (18 points) and 3rd (12 points) as the best positions. Here are the current point standings as of October 9th, 2023:

Red Bull Racing = 657

Mercedes = 326

Ferrari = 298

Aston Martin = 230

McLaren = 219

Now, if McLaren finished first and second for the rest of the 5 races, they would add an additional 165 points to their total. If Ferrari finishes 3rd (12 Points)* and 4th (10 points), McLaren would not catch Ferrari if that happened. But, as mentioned above, Mercedes has a claim to 1-4th positions as well based on their latest performance.

We can easily figure out the best-case scenario, which would be for McLaren to finish 2nd and 3rd and Ferrari to finish no higher than 6th (8 points) and 7th (6 points) for the last 5 races. Is that conceivable? Yes. Likely? Probably not.

What scenario at this point do you think will happen? Does anyone want to predict the outcome using Alteryx?

Keep it up, McLaren! All of Alteryx is rooting you on!