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Fairness isn’t free

McLaren have spent 2025 walking a tightrope of fairness. Two elite drivers. The fastest cars on the grid. And a strict policy: no number one driver.

It sounds noble — two talents pushing each other with the team benefiting from internal competition. But Formula 1 isn’t built for perfect equality. It’s built for clarity, direction, and ruthless efficiency.

The longer McLaren try to balance both sides of the garage, the more that lack of definition is costing them — not just in lap time, but in chemistry, cohesion, and credibility.

Two Camps, One Factory

Every F1 operation is a single organism: two garages, but one heartbeat. When there’s no recognised lead driver, that heartbeat starts to skip beats.

Within McLaren, everyone is under pressure to prove they’re giving both drivers the same shot. Engineers compare data obsessively, mechanics debate who gets the newest parts first, strategists rehearse equal-service scenarios down to the pit-stop millisecond. We even have the drivers picking compounds mid race for their team mates.

Even when those decisions are balanced, the perception of bias becomes corrosive. A whisper that one side of the garage is “the favourite” can split morale faster than a gearbox failure. You can see it already — subtle but real — in the body language on pit wall. One radio call questioned, one congratulation delayed, one driver missing the team celebration for a constructors title retention… 

What begins as healthy rivalry turns into quiet division initially, before becoming something we reference for decades to come.

Development by Tug-of-War

While it’s widely shared on social media rightly or wrongly that there is a not so secret Golden boy in the team, there’s also a technical consequence that rarely gets discussed.

Every upgrade changes the car’s DNA, and no two drivers exploit that DNA the same way. Norris prefers a car that rotates aggressively on entry, living on that fine edge of oversteer. Piastri tends to prefer a more stable platform, letting him brake late and fire out cleanly.

When a team alternates development direction — one week a tweak to suit Lando, the next to calm the rear for Oscar — the car stops evolving along a single philosophy. You get a pendulum instead of a progression.

It’s my belief that’s why we’ve seen alternating peaks and dips in form between the two drivers this year. Each new package flatters one, unsettles the other, and the engineers are stuck in a loop of compromise.

You can’t optimise a car for two driving styles at once when thousandths of a second separate winning from chasing.

The result? Slower feedback loops, muddier data, and a car that’s winning a race by 30 seconds to spare while the other is 42 seconds behind in fifth.

This isn’t just in Lando’s favour, Bahrain saw Oscar finish the race 9 seconds clear and Lando come home third 16 seconds later.

The Lose-Lose Championship

Unfortunately for McLaren in their hunt for ‘equality’, there’s even more cruel irony: whichever McLaren driver wins the World Drivers’ Championship, the team still loses something.

If Lando Norris takes it, social media will explode with claims that the “golden boy” was favoured — that strategy calls or tyre choices tilted his way. Even a fair fight will look political from the outside. This is Michael Massey but worse, as it’s coming from his own team!

If Oscar Piastri wins, the story shifts. McLaren’s marketing, its fan identity, its entire “Lando-era” narrative suddenly looks uncertain. Piastri would deserve full backing as champion, but where does that leave the driver who’s been the face of the team since 2019?

Either outcome breeds tension. One champion carries suspicion; the other threatens the team’s brand alignment. McLaren have engineered a scenario where success guarantees fallout.

Their biggest challenge isn’t building a winning car and having their first WDC since 2008 — it’s surviving the politics of victory.

The Ripple Beyond the Drivers

Not only will McLaren’s Social Media team have their work cut out, no amount of guess the school kid, trust falls and back to back painting Middle Management attempts of forced fun to build team morale may repair the hole in the McLaren family a win for the other garage might cause. 

Mechanics, engineers, and even factory staff naturally form attachments. When weekends swing back and forth between two camps, frustration builds. The stress of equality becomes emotional fatigue.

A team that should be celebrating podiums instead walks on eggshells, terrified a small decision will be labelled favouritism. That tension bleeds into performance — rushed pit stops, cautious strategy, and risk aversion where boldness wins races.

The culture that once felt youthful and hungry now feels managerial and defensive. In trying not to alienate anyone, McLaren risk alienating everyone.

The Leadership Void

Contrast that with teams who’ve embraced structure.

• Red Bull built a ruthless but clear model around Verstappen.

• Mercedes at their peak backed Hamilton while keeping Bottas credible.

• Ferrari in the Schumacher years channelled the entire factory behind one mission.

None of those approaches were “fair,” but all of them were effective.

While you can point out the fatal flaws around Red Bull’s decision to go all in on Max or the ultimate demise of Ferrari and Mercedes, I’m sure if you ask each of those teams if they would do it again to win another 3+ titles back to back they wouldn’t think twice.

McLaren, meanwhile, are running what looks like an HR experiment in a war zone. Their diplomacy is admirable; their indecision could be fatal. 

Not everyone can be Iceman, someone has to be Goose.

Final Lap

McLaren’s equality project began with the best intentions: respect for both drivers and a clean break from the politics of old. But Formula 1 rewards hierarchy, not idealism.

Right now, the papaya team are discovering that in trying to protect two stars, they may end up dimming both.

The question for McLaren isn’t which driver deserves the crown — it’s whether the team deserves to keep pretending the crown fits them both.