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McLaren had one of the worst strategy calls of the season in Canada and the criticism has been sharp. Ted Kravitz delivered the most pointed public assessment of what went wrong, but made a deliberate point of shielding one specific person from the blame.
A Gamble That Collapsed in Two Laps
McLaren put both Norris and Piastri on intermediate tyres at the start of a race where the circuit was drying rapidly. It was a high-risk call from a position that did not require a high-risk call. Almost the entire top ten started on slicks. Only Audi and Carlos Sainz at Williams took a similar gamble, and both had more justification from their grid positions.
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Norris moved into the lead immediately from third on the grid, which briefly made the call look inspired. Then the intermediates began to grain on the drying surface and by the end of lap two he was already in the pits. Piastri followed a lap later. The advantage had evaporated before the race had properly started.
Kravitz did not hide his assessment during the race. "It seems like Oscar Piastri is the only one who genuinely understood what was going wrong with that tyre choice." When Piastri tentatively suggested over the radio that McLaren might have made the wrong call, Kravitz responded with relief. "Finally someone is just saying it as it is: we were on the wrong tyres."
Courtenay Is Not the Culprit
In Ted's Notebook after the race, Kravitz went further and made a specific point about Will Courtenay, the highly regarded strategist who moved from Red Bull to McLaren this season. "Will Courtenay is known as an excellent strategist, but this kind of decision does not fit him at all. I simply cannot imagine this was his call."
Kravitz pointed instead toward race director Randeep Singh or possibly team principal Andrea Stella as the decision makers behind the gamble. The weekend ended in complete chaos: Norris retired with gearbox problems and Piastri received a time penalty for contact with Alex Albon, finishing eleventh, two laps down on Antonelli.
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