In qualifying McLaren had a 1-2 lockout with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. The last few races have seen McLaren and Mercedes breaking the hold Red Bull and Max Verstappen have had, so this qualifying continued that.

There were a few notable moments. At the start Verstappen tried to take the outside route to pass, but the McLaren’s had pushed over a little. The car closest to Verstappen didn’t have much room to provide a lane for Max, so Max went off the track and actually passed one off the track, while the two McLaren’s swapped positions. So after the turn it was Piastri, Verstappen, and Norris. It ended up being a big discussion about Max needing to give the place back to Norris because he gained the advantage by going off the track. It took a while, and the stewards threatened a time penalty, so after a while he gave it back.

That made Max drive angrily the rest of the way. He battled with Hamilton several times, Hamilton pulled off a good undercut to pass him, and Hamilton was pretty masterful at holding him off at times.

Verstappen was pretty mad on the radio with his team. The car wasn’t braking well so he lashed out a couple of times on the radio. Announcers mentioned he was up very late and early in the morning playing in the simulator so he seemed angry also because of that.

Eventually he tried passing Hamilton again for 3rd and his braking locked up, so his tire hit Hamilton and bounced Max’s car in the air a bit. He blew his chance to pass him and he even dropped to 5th. So he started blaming Hamilton for the turn, when it was obvious he had a lockup and couldn’t turn his own car. Red Bull team even told him they thought his argument wasn’t supported and eventually told Max to stop being childish over the radio.

Meanwhile… Piastri led for a good bit of the race, with Norris in second. McLaren’s looked really strong. They decided to pit Piastri first, and somehow that decision screwed then up. I’m not sure I understood how. Maybe someone can explain that to me. But when the putting was all done, Norris had the lead over Piastri, but they were expecting Norris to give the lead back to his teammate. The only problem was that by this time Norris was the faster teammate. So he kept extending his lead and didn’t slow down to let Piastri take over. With the final laps coming, McLaren on the radio kept giving Norris messages like “we know you will do the right thing” and “for the good of the team”. Piastri did drive pretty well, and in some ways deserved his first win, but Norris clearly had to be the one to hand it to him. Norris wasn’t happy about it and resisted it until near the end, but eventually gave it to him.

So it was some interesting and childish drama going on yesterday.