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

The McLaren team are fully conscious of the difficulty they confront with Verstappen and Red Bull in the championship battle this season, but they don't believe to modify their strategy to managing the team.

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

"This represents the approach we intend competing. This is the way in which we approach competition, and we aim to stay fair, and we want to maintain equal treatment to both drivers."

Team boss Andrea Stella is a seasoned expert of many championship fights. He won the title as engineer to Kimi Raikkonen in the 2007 season when the Ferrari driver made up seventeen points under the old scoring system in two Grands Prix to secure the title, while McLaren collapsed.

And he lost the title as race engineer to Fernando Alonso in the 2010 season, when Ferrari messed up their race strategy at the last Grand Prix of the championship and enabled Sebastian Vettel and the Red Bull team to sneak the title from under their noses.

Andrea Stella commented after the race in Austin: "We view the next five races as chances to increase the gap on Max. And when it comes to having to make a call as to a team driver, this will only be led by the numbers."

"We lean on the past experience. I can recall at least 2007, 2010, in which you reach the final Grand Prix and it's actually the [driver in] third [place] that claims the title. So we're not going to make decisions unless this is closed by mathematics."

What Prompted McLaren to Stop Development on The Current Car?

All teams this season have had to face the dilemma of how long to concentrate on their 2025 season car while also ensuring they are as prepared as they can be for the significant regulation change 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 catch up. And if they succeed, that advantage can continue for some time - look at the Red Bull team in 2022 and 2023, the last time the regulations changed.

McLaren started this year with the best car, after investing a lot of technical development into their 2025 design.

They continued to develop it for a while, but were finding reduced benefits. So when evaluating the bang for buck they were getting on their 2025 season car compared to 2026, it became an easy choice to switch focus to the following season.

Red Bull have closed the gap since bringing their new underfloor and nose section at the Italian Grand Prix, but the McLaren car stays competitive - team boss Stella said he believed Norris had the speed to challenge for the victory in Texas had he not ended up following Leclerc.

"We must keep optimising the car performance and keep executing good weekends. And from this perspective, if you think of a Grand Prix like Baku City Circuit, we failed to optimize the performance and we didn't execute a perfect race."

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

Driver Transfers: How Difficult Is It to Change Constructors?

First of all, I'm not sure the inquiry has an entirely correct basis. It's correct that both Lewis Hamilton and Sainz had slightly difficult first halves of the season, in varying manners, and that they are now performing significantly improved.

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

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

He is currently much closer than he previously. He is consistently qualifying 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 previous weekend in Texas, on one of Hamilton's preferred circuits, he was a full second slower than his teammate when the Monaco driver made his tire change, and dropped thirteen seconds over the remaining portion of the race.

In hindsight, Leclerc was on the best race strategy. Regardless, over the championship, and even now, it's hard to claim that on average Charles Leclerc has not been the superior Ferrari driver this season.

Both Lewis Hamilton and Sainz have talked about how challenging it is to switch teams, and we have to accept their statements.

Lewis Hamilton would not say even now that he was completely adjusted to Ferrari - and he is hoping the regulation changes next season will suit him; he has never particularly liked these ground-effect vehicles.

There is a lot for a driver to get their head around when they switch teams, as Hamilton has described repeatedly this year. But not every driver struggle in this way.

Alonso, for instance, was on it from the start of the 2023 when he moved to Aston Martin. And would Max Verstappen struggle if he changed constructors? I believe most in F1 would expect not.

How Soon Can We Determine The Coming Season's Competitive Order?

Before the F1 cars run for the initial time in pre-season testing next year, nobody will understand how the constructors are performing next year.

The initial session, in Barcelona on 26-30 January, is private because the constructors preferred 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 a certain indication of comparative speed emerges.

But, as always, it's only at the first race that the true and accurate situation will emerge.