Why the drivers' title battle is becoming F1's phony war

There was something apposite about the master painter from Royal Delft gradually hand-finishing the Dutch Grand Prix trophies, over the two-day lead-up to the Formula 1 contest, working at a stall set up outside the McLaren motorhome. That the two grandest ones, for victorious driver and constructor, would end up returning to the papaya palace seemed a virtual inevitability.
 
McLaren now has more than double the constructors’ points of second-placed Ferrari, while Max Verstappen is a diminishing speck in the rear-view mirrors of drivers’ championship frontrunners Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
 
There was a palpable absence of energy in the Zandvoort paddock, as if this were the last race before the summer break rather than the first one after it. All the signs pointed to an outbreak of the unfortunate contagion my wife calls “can’t-be-arsed-it-is”.
 
Only the teams who view scooping Williams for fifth place in the constructors’ standings as a win are showing much enthusiasm for the fight. Behind the scenes they have all switched focus to 2026 development – the Haas update for the US GP has long since been signed off – and groupthink is tugging everyone else in the same direction.
 
“Any more 2025 questions,” chivvied Alpine’s press attache during the mandatory ‘show and tell’ with executive technical director David Sanchez. “Upgrades for this weekend? Or is it all ’26 related?”
 
“There’s only so much you can say about a brake duct,” harrumphed one of the miserabilists present.
 
There was also a diminishing sense of intrigue about the battle for the drivers’ title – even before Norris caught the scent of smoke in his nostrils and realised his car was about to consign him to an early night at the trackside NH Hotel for McDonalds and whatever.

Norris was set to lose ground to Piatsri even before smoke emerged from his McLaren

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McLaren, for understandably pragmatic reasons, is determined to suck any potential intrigue out of the championship run-in. And that policy of inscrutable neutrality will continue even though Norris has promised to “just go for it” in the final rounds of the season, a statement which calls to mind Sebastian Vettel’s spectacular meltdown late in 2018.
 
“When it comes to the team, what's important is that the team keeps racing in the same way we have gone racing so far,” said team boss Andrea Stella.
 
“So staying as neutral as possible, facilitating the pursuit of their own aspirations for Lando and Oscar in a balanced way, in a fair way, in a sportsman-like way and that's what we will continue to do. I don't think there's any change in the approach of the team that is triggered based on the fact that we have this situation in Zandvoort.”

Let there be no mistake that Piastri and Norris are on a tight leash. You only have to look at the laptimes in the latter phase of their second stint, when both drivers suddenly found seven tenths of a second virtually in sync.

Let there be no mistake that Piastri and Norris are on a tight leash. You only have to look at the laptimes in the latter phase of their second stint, when both drivers suddenly found seven tenths of a second virtually in sync.
 
Had they found this speed down the back of the sofa, along with a partially chewed sweet? Was this a concerted battle for supremacy? Or had they just been told to build the gap a little to facilitate some margin in case of another Safety Car?
 
Word in the paddock is that Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has been urging Stella to lighten up a little and let his drivers actually race each other. But no matter who comes asking, the answer is always “no”. Whip off Stella’s shoes and socks and you’ll probably find friction burns on his heels.
 
On Friday evening, during an unusually freewheeling chat with our Dutch colleagues – Merc’s head of comms is probably still laid low with dyspepsia after reading the transcript – Wolff opened up about his past travails managing driver conflict. 

Toto Wolff knows all about handling an intra-team rivalry having looked after Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton

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Remarkably, he said one of his regrets was not letting Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have it properly in 2016, especially after the power unit failure in Malaysia which sent Hamilton into a bizarre headspin.

“That was very difficult for him [Lewis] to take,” said Wolff. “And from then on, the mistake we've done is that we tried to finish the season with as little controversy as possible. Rather than to say, we've won the championship anyway, constructor and drivers, let it roll.

“And that is something I would maybe do differently today, if we were ever to be in a luxurious position like it is. Like, you know, sometimes you fight another car, then you need to be brutal and say, we need to maximise the points. But if you're with McLaren today, just let it roll.”

Wolff was being a trifle economical with the actualite, since at that point in 2016 Mercedes was still a race away from clinching the constructors’ title and Daniel Ricciardo was still within theoretical reach of Rosberg and Hamilton.

Once he has gulped down enough Gaviscon, Merc’s communications chief will no doubt be on the blower to his boss to lecture him about hindsight bias, Agrippa’s Trilemma, and so on.

Is McLaren still concerned about Verstappen?

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And yet here we are. It would take a truly spectacular set of DNFs on McLaren’s part for Verstappen to do what Kimi Raikkonen did in 2007 and go from fringe candidate to champion at the final round.
 
Or is McLaren, too, orienting this part of its thinking towards 2026? Nine years elapsed between wins 182 and 183, so you can understand it wanting to load up the trophy cabinet at every opportunity.
 
“Remember 2013?” said one paddock sage on Sunday morning in Zandvoort, gesturing with a nod of the head to the McLaren motorhome. “2012, competitive car. 2013, shitbox. Then another 10 years of shitboxes.”
 
Stranger things have happened, even without a massive rule change.

McLaren's 2013 season began a bleak run of form, can it avoid that again?

Photo by: Patrik Lundin / Motorsport Images