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Do McLaren Face the Truth of F1 - That if You Want Win, You Can't Always Be Fair?

McLaren are well aware of the difficulty they confront with Verstappen and the Red Bull team in the drivers' championship this season, but they don't believe to alter their strategy to running the team.

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

"This is the way we plan competing. This is the method in which we approach competition, and we want to stay equitable, and we intend to maintain equal treatment to our drivers."

Team principal Andrea Stella is a seasoned expert of many title battles. He claimed the championship as engineer to Kimi Raikkonen in 2007 when the Ferrari racer recovered seventeen points under the old scoring system in two Grands Prix to win the championship, while the McLaren team collapsed.

And he missed out on the title as engineer to Alonso in 2010, when Ferrari made errors in their race strategy at the last Grand Prix of the championship and allowed Vettel and Red Bull to snatch the title from under their noses.

Andrea Stella commented following the Grand Prix in Austin: "We look at the next five races as opportunities to increase the gap on Max. And when it comes to having to make a decision as to a driver, this will exclusively be determined by mathematics."

"We rely on the experience. I can recall at least the 2007 season, the 2010 season, in which you reach the last race and it's in fact the [driver in] third [place] that claims the championship. So we're not going to close the door unless this is determined by the calculations."

What Prompted McLaren to Cease Development on This Year's Car?

Every team this season have had to face the conundrum of how long to concentrate on their 2025 car while also ensuring they are as prepared as they can be for the significant rules overhaul coming for the 2026 season.

In F1, it's usually the case that if a constructor makes mistakes at the start of a new rules cycle, it can take a long time to recover. And if they succeed, that advantage can continue for some time - look at the Red Bull team in 2022 and 2023, the most recent occasion the rules changed.

The McLaren team began this season with the best car, after investing a lot of technical development into their 2025 season design.

They continued to develop it for a while, but were experiencing diminishing returns. So when looking at the value for money they were achieving on their 2025 car versus 2026, it became an easy choice to redirect attention to the following season.

The Red Bull team have closed the gap since introducing their updated underfloor and front wing at the Monza Grand Prix, but the McLaren car stays competitive - team principal Andrea Stella stated he thought Norris had the speed to challenge for the win in Texas had he not finished behind Leclerc.

"We just have to keep maximising the performance and continue delivering good weekends. And from this perspective, if you think of a Grand Prix like Baku, we didn't maximise the car's potential and we didn't deliver a perfect performance."

"Therefore we have a large opportunity, and the outcome of this season and the drivers' championship is in our control. It's not in another team's control."

Driver Transfers: How Difficult Is It to Change Constructors?

Initially, I'm not sure the question has an completely correct basis. It's true that each of Hamilton and Sainz had somewhat difficult first halves of the championship, in different ways, and that they are currently faring significantly improved.

Sainz and Albon do now appear quite balanced. However, it's less certain that, in Hamilton's case, he is yet the "equal" of Leclerc - or not consistently, anyway.

Hamilton has failed to outperform Charles Leclerc very often at all this season, either in qualifying or race.

He is now much closer than he was. He is consistently qualifying within a few hundredths of a second of his teammate, but in qualifying it's four-two to Charles Leclerc since the mid-season break.

This previous weekend in Texas, on one of Hamilton's favourite circuits, he was a second slower than Leclerc when the Monegasque completed his tire change, and lost thirteen seconds over the remaining portion of the race.

Looking back, Leclerc was on the best race strategy. Regardless, over the championship, and even currently, it's hard to claim that on average Charles Leclerc has hasn't been the superior Ferrari racer this year.

Each of Lewis Hamilton and Sainz have discussed how challenging it is to switch teams, and we have to accept their statements.

Lewis Hamilton would not say even now that he was fully adapted to Ferrari - and he is hoping the regulation changes next year will suit him; he has never really enjoyed these ground-effect vehicles.

There is a lot for a racing driver to get their head around when they switch teams, as Hamilton has explained repeatedly this year. But not all faces difficulties in this manner.

Fernando Alonso, for instance, was performing well from the start of the 2023 season when he transferred to Aston Martin. And would Max Verstappen face challenges if he changed constructors? I suspect most in F1 would anticipate he wouldn't.

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

Until the F1 cars are driven for the first time in pre-season testing next year, no-one will know how the teams are performing next year.

The first test, in Catalunya on January 26-30, is behind closed doors because the teams preferred to understand their initial track time 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 a certain sense of relative performance emerges.

But, as always, it's only at the season opener that the true and accurate picture will become clear.