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

McLaren are fully conscious of the difficulty they encounter with Max Verstappen and the Red Bull team in the championship battle this year, but they see no reason to modify their strategy to running the team.

They will persist to provide both drivers the optimal opportunity they can and run the team on a foundation of equity and balance.

"This represents the manner we intend competing. This remains the way in which we approach racing, and we aim to remain equitable, and we intend to apply equal treatment to our drivers."

Team principal Andrea Stella is a seasoned expert of numerous title battles. He won the championship as race engineer to Kimi Raikkonen in the 2007 season when the Ferrari racer recovered 17 points under the old scoring system in two Grands Prix to win the title, while the McLaren team collapsed.

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

Stella said after the race in Austin: "We look at the remaining five Grands Prix as chances to extend the gap on Max. And when it comes to having to make a call as to a team driver, this will exclusively be led by the numbers."

"We rely on the past experience. I can remember at least the 2007 season, the 2010 season, in which you go to the final Grand Prix and it's in fact the [driver in] third [place] that wins the title. So we're not going to make decisions unless this is determined by the calculations."

Why Did McLaren Cease Upgrades on The Current Car?

Every team this year have had to face the dilemma of for how long to focus on their 2025 car while also ensuring they are as prepared as they can be for the major regulation change scheduled for the 2026 season.

In F1, it's typically the situation that if a team gets it wrong at the start of a new regulation period, it can take a long time to recover. 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 regulations changed.

McLaren started this year with the best car, after putting a lot of innovation into their 2025 design.

They did continue to develop it for a while, but were experiencing reduced benefits. So when looking at the value for money they were achieving on their 2025 season car versus the 2026 car, it became an straightforward decision to redirect attention to next year.

The Red Bull team have closed the gap since introducing their updated underfloor and nose section at the Monza Grand Prix, but the McLaren car stays competitive - team principal Andrea Stella said he believed Lando Norris had the pace to compete for the win in Texas had he not ended up following Charles Leclerc.

"We must keep maximising the car performance and continue delivering 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 deliver a perfect race."

"So definitely we have a significant opportunity, and the outcome 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 Switch Teams?

First of all, it's uncertain the inquiry has an entirely accurate basis. It's correct that both Lewis Hamilton and Sainz had somewhat sticky opening phases of the championship, in varying manners, and that they are now performing significantly improved.

Sainz and Alex Albon do now look very even. However, it's not so clear that, in Lewis Hamilton's case, he is yet the "match" of Charles Leclerc - or not regularly, at least.

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

He is currently significantly nearer than he previously. He is consistently qualifying within a small fraction of a second of Leclerc, but in qualifying it's four-two to Leclerc since the mid-season break.

This previous weekend in Texas, on one of Lewis Hamilton's favourite tracks, 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.

In hindsight, Leclerc was on the optimal strategy. Nevertheless, over the season, and even now, it's hard to argue that on average Leclerc has hasn't been the superior Ferrari racer this year.

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

Hamilton would not say even now that he was fully adapted to the Ferrari car - and he is hoping the regulation changes next year will benefit his driving style; he has never really enjoyed these venturi cars.

There is a lot for a driver to understand and adapt to when they change constructors, as Lewis Hamilton has explained repeatedly this season. But not every driver struggle 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 face challenges if he changed constructors? I believe most in F1 would anticipate he wouldn't.

When Will We Know Next Year's Competitive Order?

Until the cars run for the first time in pre-season testing next year, nobody will know how the constructors are performing in the upcoming season.

The initial session, in Catalunya on 26-30 January, is behind closed doors because the teams wanted to get their heads around their initial track time of the new engines without the scrutiny of the media.

So the pair of sessions in Sakhir on February 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 first race that the complete and precise situation will become clear.