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Do McLaren Face the Truth of F1 - That to Win, It's Not Always Possible to Play Fair?

McLaren are fully conscious of the difficulty they face with Verstappen and the Red Bull team in the championship battle this year, but they don't believe to modify their approach to running the team.

They will persist to provide their two drivers the best chance they can and operate the team on a foundation of fairness and equanimity.

"This represents the approach we plan competing. This remains the method in which we tackle competition, and we aim to stay fair, and we want to apply equal treatment to both drivers."

Team principal Andrea Stella is a veteran of numerous title battles. He claimed the championship as race engineer to Kimi Raikkonen in the 2007 season when the Ferrari racer recovered seventeen points under the previous points system in two races to win the title, while the McLaren team collapsed.

And he missed out on the championship as engineer to Fernando Alonso in 2010, when the Ferrari team messed up their strategy at the final race of the championship and enabled Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull to snatch the title from under their noses.

Stella said following the Grand Prix in Texas: "We view the remaining five Grands Prix as opportunities to increase the gap on Verstappen. And when it comes to having to make a decision as to a driver, this will only be led by mathematics."

"We rely on the experience. I can recall at least 2007, 2010, in which you go to the final Grand Prix and it's actually the third-placed driver that wins the title. So we're not going to close the door unless this is closed by the calculations."

Why Did McLaren Cease Upgrades on This Year's Car?

Every team this season have had to face the conundrum of for how long to focus on their 2025 car while also making sure they are as ready as they can be for the major rules overhaul coming for the 2026 season.

In Formula 1, it's typically the case that if a constructor makes mistakes at the start of a new regulation period, it can take a long time to recover. And if they get it right, that advantage can last for a while - look at the Red Bull team in 2022 and 2023, the most recent occasion the rules were modified.

McLaren began this season with the fastest car, after putting a lot of innovation into their 2025 season design.

They did continue to improve it for a period, but were finding reduced benefits. So when evaluating the bang for buck they were achieving on their 2025 season car versus the 2026 car, it became an easy decision to switch focus to the following season.

Red Bull have caught up since introducing their new floor and nose section at the Italian Grand Prix, but the McLaren stays competitive - team principal Stella said he believed Lando Norris had the speed to challenge for the victory in Austin had he not ended up behind Charles Leclerc.

"We must keep maximising the car performance and continue executing good race weekends. And from this point of view, if you think of a race like Baku City Circuit, we didn't maximise the performance and we didn't execute a perfect performance."

"So definitely we have a large chance, and the result of this championship and the driver's title is in our hands. It's not placed in someone else's hands."

Driver Transfers: How Difficult Is It to Change Constructors?

First of all, I'm not sure the question has an entirely accurate premise. It's correct that both Hamilton and Sainz had slightly difficult first halves of the championship, in different ways, and that they are now performing much better.

Sainz and Albon currently appear quite balanced. However, it's not so clear that, in Hamilton's case, he is yet the "match" of Charles Leclerc - or not regularly, anyway.

Hamilton has failed to outperform Leclerc very often at all this year, either in qualifying or Grand Prix.

He is currently much closer than he previously. He is consistently qualifying within a few hundredths of a second of Leclerc, but in qualifying it's 4-2 to Leclerc since the summer break.

This last weekend in Texas, on one of Hamilton's preferred tracks, he was a second behind Leclerc when the Monaco driver completed his tire change, and lost thirteen seconds over the remaining portion of the Grand Prix.

Looking back, Leclerc was on the best strategy. Nevertheless, over the championship, and even currently, it's difficult to argue that on balance Leclerc has not been the better Ferrari racer this year.

Both Hamilton and Carlos Sainz have discussed how challenging it is to change constructors, and we have to take them at their word.

Lewis Hamilton would not say even now that he was fully adapted to the Ferrari car - and he is expecting the new rules next season will suit him; he has never particularly liked these venturi cars.

There is a great deal for a racing driver to understand and adapt to when they switch teams, as Lewis Hamilton has explained many times this season. But not every driver struggle in this manner.

Fernando Alonso, for example, was performing well from the start of the 2023 season when he moved to Aston Martin. And would Max Verstappen struggle if he changed constructors? I believe the majority in Formula 1 would anticipate he wouldn't.

When Will We Know Next Year's Competitive Order?

Before the cars run for the first time in pre-season testing next year, no-one will understand how the teams are looking in the upcoming season.

The initial session, in Barcelona on January 26-30, is behind closed doors because the teams preferred to understand their first running of the new engines without the prying eyes of the media.

So the pair of sessions in Bahrain on 11-13 and February 18-20 will be the initial occasion some kind of sense of relative performance emerges.

But, as always, it's not until the season opener that the true and accurate situation will emerge.