Quote Originally Posted by Nitrodaze View Post
A huge majority of the times teams that have not supported the driver in the lead after the summer break, found that the decision lead to them losing the driver's championship. The 2017 season comes to mind, Hamilton was leading Alonso, but they let them race to the end of the season and lost the driver's championship to Raikonnen by one point. The 2024 season is another example. If McLaren had put their support behind Norris, he may have won the 2024 driver's title. I am sure if you look hard, you would find a few others. Hence, McLaren was lucky that Redbull took their time getting their act together. If they had done it by one race earlier, there is a high chance Verstappen may have won it.

On the McLaren drivers, l think Piastri has surpassed Norris this season. There is some argument that the car at the start of the season favoured Piastri's driving style. But the car that started the season appears to be relatively faster than the car that finished the season.

I say relatively to mean the relative gap of the McLaren to the nearest rival was larger in the Piastri car than in the Norris car. You could say that this is because the rivals have caught up in development. What we cannot say is that McLaren stopped development, which is why they caught up. They did not as they were modifying the car to suit Norris.

Which makes me wonder, what was the cost of spending time to modify the car for Norris to the McLaren 2026 project time? Surely, they must have pulled engineers from the project to do the modification. Not unless they plan to take that suspension into the 2026 car.
Kimi and Ferrari won the championships in 2007, not 2017. And McLaren had every right to do what they did and choose not to favor one driver over another. Some like it, some don't. In the case of 2025 Lando would have got screwed out of a WDC had McLaren done it. But in the end, now Lando can say he did it without team orders for the other driver, and rules that allowed them to race.

As for any claims that McLaren modified the car to suit Norris more, nothing more than pure speculation being stated as fact. What you think doesn't make it true.