The 10 Worst Strategy Calls of 2025: strategy didn’t fail on the pit wall — it failed in the gaps

“Bad strategy” isn’t a single wrong lap. It’s a sequence of gaps you open up and then can’t close:

  • the gap between what the tyre can do and what traffic will allow
  • the gap between a pit window that’s open in theory and one that’s actually usable
  • the gap between “waiting for a Safety Car” and realising you’ve built a plan around a thing you cannot summon
  • the gap between covering a rival and accidentally covering yourself into dead air

And in a season decided by two points at the top, those gaps weren’t cosmetic.

They were championship-shaped.

Before we get into the 10 calls, one framing point matters: there is no fastest-lap bonus from 2025 onwards, so the margin for cute end-of-race punts got smaller. Your points come from finishing position, not a late purple lap bailout.

If you want to stress-test how big these moments were, run the swings through our Championship Points Simulator.

2025 in one table: why every point was heavier

The final 2025 picture is brutal in its simplicity:

  • Drivers’ Championship (final): Lando Norris 423, Max Verstappen 421, Oscar Piastri 410
  • Constructors’ Championship (final): McLaren 833, Mercedes 469, Red Bull 451, Ferrari 398

That’s not a “strategy is important” platitude.

That’s a season where one wrong Safety Car decision can turn into a title problem, because you don’t get a fastest-lap point back later as a make-good.

If you want the other side of this story, start here:

Now, the ugly version.

The 10 Worst Strategy Calls of 2025

1) McLaren, Qatar: the Safety Car you didn’t take (in a mandatory two-stop race)

Qatar’s failure wasn’t subtle. It was structural.

In a mandated two-stop context, the early Safety Car is basically a pit-stop discount. Most of the field took it. McLaren didn’t—partly to avoid double-stacking—and Verstappen got the “free change” that flipped the race state.

Result: Verstappen wins, Norris P4, Piastri P2 — and the title fight gets dragged to Abu Dhabi instead of being closed out in Doha.

The gap that killed them: the gap between preserving both cars’ track position and the reality that track position is meaningless when the pit-stop cost collapses under neutralisation.

If you want to quantify the points damage: lock in the finishing positions, then rerun plausible alternate outcomes in /simulate.

2) Ferrari, Monaco: turning a lead into P4 with two stops in three laps

Monaco 2025 tried to force strategy into relevance with the mandatory two-stop rule. And Ferrari still managed to make it worse.

Leclerc’s sequence — wets to inters (Lap 18), then to hards (Lap 21), effectively compressing both stops into the same traffic moment — dropped him behind the cars he needed to stay ahead of. Red Bull then executed the overcut and Perez controlled the front.

Ferrari didn’t pretend it was fine. They called it a judgement mistake—because if you’re leading Monaco and you finish fourth, the maths is the only witness you need.

The gap that killed them: the gap between “I need to pit because the track is changing” and “I need to pit where I rejoin is actually survivable.”

3) Mercedes, Silverstone: slicks on the formation lap — and no split to contain the downside

The British GP storm offered teams a choice: be brave, or be patient.

Mercedes went brave: Russell and Antonelli switched from inters to slicks at the end of the formation lap, and the call collapsed almost immediately as conditions and grip didn’t support it. Worse, Mercedes didn’t split strategies to hedge the risk.

Wolff’s summary was as sharp as the outcome: the first call was wrong, and the rest spiralled.

The gap that killed them: the gap between “we see a dry line” and “the tyres can actually switch on before you donate 20 seconds to everyone behind.”

4) McLaren, Monza: the late pit gamble that turned into a pit-stop controversy

Monza punishes indecision because track position + DRS trains make “theoretical pace” irrelevant.

McLaren tried to pit late while keeping optionality for a Safety Car that never showed. They pitted Piastri first; Norris suffered a slow stop; Piastri jumped him; then team orders entered the chat.

That isn’t just messy optics. It’s a strategy failure that created a gap inside your own garage, and then forced you to spend laps managing it instead of managing Verstappen.

The gap that killed them: the gap between “two cars, one optimal window” and the reality that double-stacking risk is still risk—even when you’re the fastest team.

5) Ferrari, Hungary: pole position… and an ineffective plan that couldn’t defend it

Budapest is normally a tyre-life and track-position circuit—meaning the wrong plan doesn’t look dramatic, it just bleeds you.

Leclerc started from pole and ended up fourth after an ineffective two-stop approach (plus a time penalty), while Norris’ one-stop worked and McLaren banked the kind of points that decide titles.

This is the quietest kind of strategy loss: no clown moment, just the wrong model for degradation and race state.

The gap that killed them: the gap between “we can attack on fresher tyres” and “we can actually use fresher tyres in traffic at the Hungaroring.”

6) Williams, Mexico City: committing to the slower one-stop before the race asked for it

Mexico is a tyre-temperature problem dressed up as a race.

Williams put Albon on the hard tyre and committed early to a one-stop that turned out to be the slower option. The key line was in the debrief: they missed the chance to be dynamic.

In midfield terms, that’s the whole ball game—because you don’t have the raw pace to “drive out of it.”

The gap that killed them: the gap between “we need a clean, simple race” and “simplicity is only valuable if it’s not slower.”

7) Aston Martin, Singapore: building a race around an SC that never arrived

Singapore’s reputation is a trap.

It usually produces Safety Cars. But 2025 didn’t—and if your race plan is “wait for it,” you’re basically choosing tyre death as your strategy.

Aston Martin’s own summary told the story: they waited, the SC never came, and the second stint was punished by traffic and overheating.

Singapore doesn’t forgive that because the pit loss is huge and overtaking is hard—meaning you can’t undo the timing error with aggression later.

The gap that killed them: the gap between a circuit’s historical volatility and the actual volatility you’re given on the night.

8) Racing Bulls, Singapore: the long first stint that only works if chaos shows up

This is the cousin of the Aston mistake, but more expensive in a midfield fight.

Lawson ran long in the top 10, hoping for neutralisation. It didn’t happen. When he pitted, the race state had already moved on.

In modern F1, “holding out” is only good strategy if you can defend the out-lap and still have tyre life to attack after the stop.

If not, it’s just delayed loss.

The gap that killed them: the gap between “we’re temporarily P9” and “we’re actually fast enough to remain P9 when the stops cycle.”

9) Haas, Suzuka: the Safety Car bet that turned into an 18th-place reality check

Starting on the hard tyre to “buy optionality” is a legitimate tool.

But it’s also a gamble that needs a trigger: a Safety Car, a VSC, a red flag, something to convert stint length into position.

Ocon said it plainly: they started on hards to pick up a Safety Car. It didn’t happen. And Suzuka’s low deg / hard-to-pass character did the rest.

The gap that killed them: the gap between “nothing to lose” and the hidden cost of being thrown into the wrong traffic group.

10) Red Bull, Bahrain: when pit-stop execution turns a good plan into a bad race

Not every strategy failure is “wrong tyre, wrong lap.”

Sometimes you call the right windows and your execution collapses the advantage anyway.

In Bahrain, Red Bull’s pit-stop release light system failed, holding both Verstappen and Tsunoda longer than the stop itself required—then Verstappen’s second stop compounded the damage.

You can’t undercut, overcut, or cover anyone when your “time loss” isn’t the track—it’s your own box.

The gap that killed them: the gap between strategy as a plan and strategy as a process. If your process breaks, your plan is fiction.

The patterns behind the failures (and how to spot them next season)

Across all 10, the same three failure modes repeat:

  1. Safety Car fantasy

    • Waiting for neutralisation is not a strategy; it’s a hope.
    • Hope becomes fatal when the pit loss is big (Singapore) or the rules force stops anyway (Qatar).

  2. Compound denial

    • Teams “wanted” a tyre to be viable (hard at Mexico, slicks at Silverstone) and committed before the track confirmed it.

  3. No downside management

    • The best teams hedge: split strategies, protect the out-lap, keep a second option alive.
    • The worst calls in 2025 weren’t aggressive. They were aggressive with no escape hatch.

Want to see how thin the margins were? Take any of these races and run a counterfactual points swing through /simulate. In a season that ended 423–421, you don’t need miracles — you need one less self-inflicted gap.

Conclusion: 2025’s worst calls weren’t about being dumb — they were about being late

The pit wall rarely loses because it has no information.

It loses because it gets the information five minutes late:

  • late to the crossover
  • late to the neutralisation
  • late to the traffic picture
  • late to the fact that today’s race is not last year’s race

That’s what made 2025 so punishing. With no fastest-lap bonus to cushion the edges and a title margin measured in single digits, the bad calls weren’t memes.

They were points.

And points were the championship.

If you want to explore how different those finales could have looked with one decision flipped, start here: /simulate.