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

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

They will persist to give both drivers the optimal opportunity they can and operate the team on a basis of fairness and equanimity.

"This represents the manner we intend competing. This is the philosophy in which we tackle competition, and we want to stay equitable, and we want to apply equality to our drivers."

Team boss Andrea Stella is a veteran of numerous title battles. He claimed the title as engineer to Kimi Raikkonen in the 2007 season when the Ferrari driver recovered 17 points under the old scoring system in two races to win the championship, while the McLaren team collapsed.

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

Stella said after the Grand Prix in Austin: "We view the next five races as chances to increase the gap on Max. And when it involves having to make a call as to a team driver, this will only be led by mathematics."

"We lean on the past experience. I can recall at least 2007, the 2010 season, in which you reach the last race and it's in fact the third-placed driver that claims the title. So we're not going to make decisions unless this is closed by the calculations."

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

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

In Formula 1, it's typically the case that if a team makes mistakes at the beginning of a new rules cycle, it can take a long time to catch up. And if they succeed, that advantage can continue for some time - consider the Red Bull team in 2022 and 2023, the most recent occasion the rules changed.

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

They continued to improve it for a while, but were experiencing diminishing returns. So when evaluating the value for money they were getting on their 2025 car versus 2026, it became an easy decision to switch focus to next year.

Red Bull have caught up since introducing their updated floor and front wing at the Monza Grand Prix, but the McLaren stays competitive - team boss Andrea Stella stated he believed Norris had the speed to challenge for the victory in Austin had he not finished following Leclerc.

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

"Therefore we have a significant opportunity, and the outcome of this season and the drivers' championship is in our control. It's not placed in someone else's hands."

Team Changes: How Difficult Is It to Switch Teams?

Initially, it's uncertain the inquiry has an entirely correct basis. It's correct that both Hamilton and Carlos Sainz had slightly difficult first halves of the championship, in different ways, and that they are currently performing much better.

Sainz and Albon currently appear quite balanced. However, it's less certain that, in Hamilton's case, he is yet the "equal" of Leclerc - or not regularly, at least.

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

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

This last weekend in Texas, on one of Hamilton's preferred circuits, he was a full second slower than Leclerc when the Monegasque completed his pit stop, and lost 13 seconds over the rest of the Grand Prix.

Looking back, Leclerc was on the best race strategy. Regardless, over the championship, and even currently, it's hard to claim that on balance Charles Leclerc has hasn't been the better Ferrari driver this season.

Both Hamilton and Sainz have discussed how challenging it is to switch teams, and we have to take them at their word.

Hamilton would not claim even now that he was fully adapted to Ferrari - and he is hoping the new rules next season will benefit his driving style; he has never particularly liked these ground-effect vehicles.

There is a great deal for a driver to understand and adapt to when they change constructors, as Hamilton has described many times this year. But not every driver faces difficulties in this way.

Alonso, for example, was performing well from the beginning of the 2023 season when he transferred to Aston Martin. And would Max Verstappen struggle if he switched teams? I believe the majority in Formula 1 would expect not.

How Soon Can We Determine The Coming Season's Team Performance?

Until the cars are driven for the initial time in winter testing next year, nobody will understand how the constructors are performing next year.

The initial session, in Catalunya on January 26-30, is behind closed doors because the teams wanted to get their heads around their initial track time of the power unit changes without the prying eyes of the press.

So the two tests in Bahrain on February 11-13 and 18-20 February will be the initial occasion some kind of sense of comparative speed emerges.

But, as ever, it's only at the season opener that the complete and precise picture will emerge.