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Do McLaren Accept Reality of F1 - That to Win, You Can't Always Be Fair?

The McLaren team are well aware of the difficulty they confront with Max Verstappen and Red Bull in the championship battle this year, but they don't believe to modify their approach to managing the team.

They will continue to give their two drivers the best chance they can and run the team on a foundation of equity and balance.

"This represents the manner we intend racing. This remains the philosophy in which we approach racing, and we aim to stay equitable, and we intend to maintain equality to both drivers."

Team boss Stella is a seasoned expert of many title battles. He won the championship as race engineer to Kimi Raikkonen in 2007 when the Ferrari racer made up seventeen points under the previous points system in two Grands Prix to secure the title, while the McLaren team imploded.

And he missed out on the title as engineer to Fernando Alonso in 2010, when the Ferrari team made errors in their race strategy at the final race of the season and allowed Sebastian Vettel and the Red Bull team to snatch the championship from their grasp.

Andrea Stella said after the race in Austin: "We view the remaining five Grands Prix as opportunities to increase the gap on Verstappen. And when it involves having to make a decision as to a driver, this will only be determined by the numbers."

"We rely on the experience. I can recall at least the 2007 season, 2010, in which you reach the last race and it's actually the third-placed driver that claims the championship. So we're not going to make decisions unless this is determined by mathematics."

Why Did McLaren Stop Development on This Year's Car?

All teams this year have had to confront the dilemma of how long to concentrate on their 2025 car while also making sure they are as ready as they can be for the significant rules overhaul coming for the 2026 season.

In F1, it's typically the situation that if a constructor gets it wrong at the beginning of a new rules cycle, it can take a considerable period to recover. And if they succeed, that benefit can continue for some time - look at Red Bull in 2022 and 2023, the last time the rules were modified.

The McLaren team started this year with the fastest car, after investing a lot of innovation into their 2025 design.

They did continue to improve it for a while, but were finding reduced benefits. So when looking at the bang for buck they were getting on their 2025 season car compared to 2026, it became an straightforward decision to redirect attention to the following season.

The Red Bull team have caught up since bringing their updated underfloor and nose section at the Italian Grand Prix, but the McLaren car remains competitive - team boss Andrea Stella said he believed Lando Norris had the pace to challenge for the victory in Austin had he not ended up behind Charles Leclerc.

"We must continue optimising the car performance and keep executing good race weekends. And from this perspective, if you think of a race like Baku, we failed to optimize the performance and we didn't deliver a flawless performance."

"Therefore we have a large opportunity, and the result of this championship and the driver's title is in our hands. It's not in another team's control."

Driver Transfers: How Challenging Is It to Switch Teams?

Initially, it's uncertain the inquiry has an completely correct premise. It's correct that both Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz had slightly difficult first halves of the championship, in different ways, and that they are now performing significantly improved.

Sainz and Alex Albon currently look very even. However, it's less certain that, in Hamilton's case, he is yet the "match" of Leclerc - or not consistently, anyway.

Hamilton has not beaten Charles Leclerc very often at all this year, either in qualifying sessions or Grand Prix.

He is currently much closer than he was. He is regularly setting times within a few hundredths of a second of his teammate, but in qualifying battles it's four-two to Leclerc since the summer break.

This previous weekend in Austin, on one of Hamilton's preferred circuits, he was a full second slower than Leclerc when the Monaco driver completed his pit stop, and dropped 13 seconds over the rest of the Grand Prix.

In hindsight, Leclerc was on the optimal race strategy. Regardless, over the season, and even now, it's difficult to argue that on balance Leclerc has hasn't been the better Ferrari racer this season.

Each of Hamilton and Sainz have talked about how difficult it is to switch teams, and we have to accept their statements.

Hamilton would not say even currently that he was completely adjusted to Ferrari - and he is hoping the regulation changes next year will benefit his driving style; he has never really enjoyed these ground-effect vehicles.

There is a great deal for a driver to get their head around when they change constructors, as Lewis Hamilton has described many times this year. But not every driver faces difficulties in this manner.

Alonso, for instance, was on it from the beginning of the 2023 when he moved to Aston Martin. And would Max Verstappen face challenges if he switched teams? I suspect most in F1 would anticipate he wouldn't.

How Soon Can We Determine Next Year's Competitive Order?

Before the F1 cars are driven for the first time in winter testing next season, no-one will understand how the constructors are performing in the upcoming season.

The first test, in Catalunya on 26-30 January, is behind closed doors because the teams preferred to get their heads around their first running of the power unit changes without the scrutiny of the media.

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

But, as ever, it's only at the first race that the complete and precise situation will become clear.