Can the McLaren team Continue Playing Fair and Stop Max Verstappen? - Formula 1 Q&A

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

The McLaren team are fully conscious of the challenge they confront with Max Verstappen and Red Bull in the drivers' championship this year, but they see no reason to alter their method to managing the team.

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

"This represents the approach we plan competing. This remains the philosophy in which we approach competition, and we want to remain fair, and we want to apply equality to both drivers."

Team principal Andrea Stella is a veteran of many championship fights. He claimed the championship as engineer to Kimi Raikkonen in 2007 when the Ferrari racer made up seventeen points under the old scoring system in two races to win the championship, while McLaren collapsed.

And he lost the championship as race engineer to Alonso in 2010, when the Ferrari team made errors in their race strategy at the final race of the championship and enabled Sebastian Vettel and the Red Bull team to sneak the title from their grasp.

Andrea Stella commented following the Grand Prix in Texas: "We look at the remaining five Grands Prix as opportunities to increase the gap on Max. And when it involves having to make a call as to a driver, this will exclusively be led by mathematics."

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

What Prompted McLaren to Cease Development on The Current Car?

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

In Formula 1, 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 get it right, that advantage can last for a while - consider the Red Bull team in 2022 and 2023, the most recent occasion the rules changed.

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

They continued to improve it for a while, but were experiencing reduced benefits. So when looking at the value for money they were getting on their 2025 season car compared to 2026, it became an easy choice to switch focus to next year.

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

"We just have to keep maximising the car performance and continue executing good race weekends. And from this point of view, if you consider a race like Baku, we failed to optimize the performance and we didn't deliver a flawless performance."

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

Driver Transfers: How Difficult Is It to Switch Teams?

Initially, I'm not sure the question has an entirely correct premise. It's true that both Hamilton and Carlos Sainz had somewhat sticky first halves of the championship, in different ways, and that they are now faring much better.

Carlos Sainz and Albon currently appear quite balanced. However, it's less certain that, in Lewis Hamilton's case, he is currently the "match" of Charles Leclerc - or not consistently, anyway.

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

He is currently significantly nearer than he was. He is consistently setting times within a few hundredths of a second of his teammate, but in qualifying it's 4-2 to Charles Leclerc since the mid-season break.

This last weekend in Austin, on one of Lewis Hamilton's favourite tracks, he was a second behind his teammate when the Monegasque completed his tire change, and lost 13 seconds over the remaining portion of the race.

Looking back, Leclerc was on the optimal race strategy. Nevertheless, over the championship, and even currently, it's difficult to argue that on balance Charles Leclerc has not been the superior Ferrari driver this season.

Each of Hamilton and Sainz have discussed how challenging it is to change constructors, and we have to accept their statements.

Hamilton would not claim even currently that he was fully adapted to Ferrari - and he is expecting the regulation changes next year will benefit his driving style; he has never particularly liked these venturi cars.

There is a lot for a driver to get their head around when they switch teams, as Hamilton has described many times this season. But not every driver faces difficulties in this manner.

Fernando Alonso, for instance, was performing well from the start of the 2023 when he transferred to Aston Martin. And would Verstappen struggle if he changed constructors? I suspect the majority in Formula 1 would expect not.

When Will We Know The Coming Season's Competitive Order?

Until the cars are driven for the initial time in pre-season testing next season, no-one will understand how the constructors are looking in the upcoming season.

The initial session, in Barcelona on January 26-30, is behind closed doors because the constructors wanted to get their heads around their first running of the power unit changes without the prying eyes of the media.

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

But, as ever, it's not until the first race that the true and accurate situation will emerge.