The crucial pitstop that clinched McLaren the 2024 F1 world title

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says his team would have lost the F1 constructors’ championship to Ferrari without a lightning-quick pit stop.

Lando Norris’s victory at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix secured McLaren their ninth constructors’ championship crown but their first since 1998.

Norris was under immense pressure - especially after teammate Oscar Piastri was spun around by Max Verstappen into the first corner - but did not put a foot wrong as he resisted the Ferrari duo of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc.

His fourth win of the campaign ultimately put the title beyond Ferrari’s reach, with McLaren triumphing by 14 points in the end.

McLaren’s pit crew also delivered by pulling off a crucial two-second pit stop for Norris when he pitted after Sainz, who had been gaining the Briton on fresher tyres. With Norris’s margin of victory only 5.8 seconds at the chequered flag, fine margins during the pit stops proved vital.

And Brown lauded McLaren’s pit crew for their performance under pressure.

“I would not have wanted to be on the pit crew who needed to deliver a two-second pit stop, and they did” Brown told the High Performance podcast.

“I mean, talk about pressure. While the season, of course, is made up of 24 races, you could say we were about seven-tenths [of a second] away from losing the championship.

“Because Lando came out 1.6, 1.7 [seconds] in front of Carlos, and Carlos was fast. And I think with the dirty air there, even though I think Lando had a little bit left in the tank, had he been in DRS, I don’t think we would have been able to defend it: The Ferrari’s very quick in a straight line, Lando gets in the dirty air.

“Imagine: Carlos comes in, he does a 2.2-second pit stop, you know you need to better that. What pressure. They stepped up, delivered the best pit stop of the race, and that’s what the team has been doing all year. It’s been amazing.”

McLaren’s 'business as usual’ approach

Brown said he wanted McLaren to approach the season finale no different to any other race, despite the championship being at stake.

“It’s got to be business as usual. It’s easy to say, and of course it’s not exactly: everyone knows it’s not business as usual,” he explained.

"But I had a lot of people asking me ‘what are you going to do different for this race or the last couple of races’. I think you’ve got to keep doing what got you in the position you are in.

“The minute you start changing your game, it’s like, wait a minute, we’ve been doing great pit stops all year, we’ve got the world record, we don’t need to tell them what’s on the line. I think they knew that.”