Yes, I realize that McLaren is coming off back-to-back Constructors’ Championships and Lando Norris (my boy!) is the reigning World Drivers’ Champion. Clearly, their on-track performance is that of an elite team that will probably continue fighting for championships for years to come.
Or maybe their time in the spotlight is already fading, and the new regulations will reveal that they simply got lucky with a fast car, one that masked their familiar midfield tendencies.
Given that they almost threw away the Drivers’ Championship during the 2025 season and Norris just narrowly edged Max Verstappen for the title, I’m not entirely convinced that these poor decisions won’t eventually be their undoing in seasons to come. After all, they only avoided disaster this season thanks to a genuine rocket ship of a car.
My skepticism can be broken down into three structural issues that could quietly undermine McLaren’s championship ambitions.
A commitment to “fairness” that creates chaos
While McLaren named Lando as their number one driver for the 2024 season to prevent Oscar Piastri from repeating his actions at Monza, McLaren took a different route this season by not only refusing to name a number one driver but also committing to an unreal level of “fairness” across both garages. Sometimes with near-disastrous consequences.
McLaren actually laid the groundwork for this back in that 2024 season with the infamous swap back in Hungary. For some reason, McLaren pit Norris ahead of Piastri even though the latter was in the lead. With Norris in the lead, his race engineer, Will Joseph, spent the ensuing 20–30 laps yapping about “needing the team to win a championship” and similar sentiments in an effort to convince Norris to hand the position (and Grand Prix win) back to Piastri. All because McLaren made a strategy blunder and then placed the burden of fixing it on the drivers.
Fast forward to the 2025 season, and a similar scenario played out in reverse. In the late stages of the Italian Grand Prix, McLaren attempted to prevent Piastri from being undercut by Charles Leclerc and asked Norris if it was okay with him for Piastri to pit first. Norris agreed on the condition that he would not be undercut.
McLaren’s pit strategy is governed by an almost dogmatic rule: whoever is leading after lap one gets pit priority. No undercuts. No exceptions. Rather than letting each garage optimize its own race, McLaren enforces “fairness,” even when it actively compromises the result.
Going back to Monza, the pit wall asked Norris if he was willing to forgo the usual pit priority to prevent Piastri from being undercut by another driver. He agreed, on the condition that no undercut between the McLarens would occur. Accordingly, Piastri pitted first, and Norris would have still come out in front if the pit stop had been decent. Of course, it was not decent at all and led to Norris coming out behind Piastri.
Unsurprisingly, Piastri was asked to let Norris back through since the poor pit stop is the only reason the two ended up swapping positions. Also unsurprisingly, Piastri tried to be all “I thought we said pit stops were part of racing” as a reason why he shouldn’t have to give the position back. McLaren’s response was effectively: just give the position back. He did, and McLaren was properly panned by critics and fans alike.
If the pit priority and forced position swaps weren’t enough, McLaren also appeared to discipline its drivers—most notably Norris—when on-track incidents conflicted with the team’s “family” ethos.
While McLaren never publicly detailed these repercussions, they did confirm their existence, and the pattern quickly became obvious. Early in the season, the team alternated which driver ran last in Q3, allowing both to benefit from peak track evolution.
That changed after Norris collided with Piastri late in the Canadian Grand Prix. From that point forward, Piastri almost exclusively ran last in Q3 for an extended stretch, giving him a consistent qualifying advantage while Norris’ struggles continued. The shift coincided with Piastri opening a 34-point lead in the standings following Norris’ mechanical DNF at Zandvoort.
The issue resurfaced after the Singapore Grand Prix, where Norris passed Piastri aggressively but cleanly for second place. Piastri voiced his displeasure over the radio and later confirmed that “repercussions” were again in place.
Ironically, those measures vanished immediately after Piastri eliminated both McLarens from the Sprint Race at the United States Grand Prix. From that point on, the drivers were free to race—highlighting just how selectively and inconsistently McLaren applied its own discipline.
A pit wall that consistently finds new ways to fumble races
Beyond the self-inflicted chaos created by McLaren’s “fairness” doctrine, the pit wall also made strategy calls in 2025 that actively cost them race results. Two of the most egregious came in consecutive races.
In Las Vegas, McLaren ran both cars excessively low in an attempt to compensate for their straight-line speed deficit. The gamble backfired spectacularly, with both cars disqualified post-race for excessive plank wear. While Norris had taken pole and finished second on the road, the risk was never proportional to the reward. A conservative setup likely still would have yielded solid points. Instead, McLaren left with nothing.
Qatar was worse. With Pirelli limiting each tire set to 25 laps, the 57-lap race was always going to be a straightforward two-stop. When an early safety car on lap seven allowed most of the field to complete one of those stops at minimal cost, McLaren inexplicably stayed out. Every other team emerged needing just one more stop; both McLarens still needed two.
The pit wall argued that pitting early reduced flexibility, but flexibility is meaningless when the alternative guarantees an extra stop. Unsurprisingly, McLaren turned a likely 1–3 finish into a 2–4, not through bad luck, but through an avoidable, self-inflicted decision.
They may have been just two calls in a long season, but they were errors we simply haven’t seen other top teams make, and they give me serious pause.
A worrying history when the rules reset
Before their development team finally cracked the code and gave McLaren one of the fastest cars in the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025*, McLaren finished 5th and 4th in the previous two seasons during the ground effect era.
* Despite what people might think, McLaren did not have the fastest car for the entire 2025 season. It was undoubtedly the fastest for the first half of the season, but once they stopped bringing updates to the car, Red Bull continued upgrading and built an absolute rocket ship.
Now, I realize that car development is the entire point of Formula 1, and there’s nothing wrong with being a late bloomer of sorts.
My hesitation simply comes in light of the horrible calls during the 2025 season. They were only able to overcome these mistakes with an exceptionally fast car. No one will remember Vegas and Qatar, or even Monza and Hungary, in light of McLaren’s back-to-back Constructors’ Championships and Norris’ Drivers’ Championship. Had they let Verstappen overcome the 100-plus point deficit and complete the greatest comeback in F1 history, though, all of those decisions would have come back to bite them in the ass.
Let’s remember, before this run of form in 2024 and 2025, McLaren were, for the better part of a decade, a midfield team. From 2013 to 2023, they only finished in the top 3 once and had an average finishing position of 5.45.
Coming off the success of the last two seasons, McLaren should be perfectly positioned to continue their dominance into 2026. They’ve got the reigning Drivers’ Champion in Lando Norris. They have another solid, championship-contending driver in Oscar Piastri. They just won the Constructors’ Championship by 364 points. Everything is great. For now.
With the 2026 regulation reset looming, McLaren may soon learn whether they built a championship-winning operation—or simply survived their own mistakes behind the wheel of a perfect car.