Red Bull's driver Max Verstappen closed the deficit in the championship standings by winning both the sprint and main races at the United States Grand Prix.
Lando Norris came second on Sunday to narrow his teammate Oscar Piastri's championship lead to 14 points with five Grands Prix remaining.
Four-time championship winner Max Verstappen is now only 40 points behind Oscar Piastri approaching this upcoming Mexican Grand Prix.
The McLaren team are fully conscious of the challenge they encounter with Verstappen and the Red Bull team in the championship battle this year, but they see no reason to change their method to running the team.
They will continue to give their two drivers the optimal opportunity they can and operate the team on a basis of equity and balance.
"This represents the way we intend competing. This remains the way in which we tackle racing, and we aim to stay fair, and we want to maintain equal treatment to both drivers."
Team principal Stella is a veteran of numerous title battles. He won the title as engineer to Raikkonen in 2007 when the Ferrari driver made up 17 points under the previous points system in two races to secure the championship, while McLaren collapsed.
And he lost the championship as engineer to Alonso in 2010, when Ferrari messed up their race strategy at the last Grand Prix of the season and enabled Vettel and the Red Bull team to sneak the championship from under their noses.
Stella said after the Grand Prix in Texas: "We look at the next five races as chances to increase the gap on Max. And when it involves having to make a call as to a team driver, this will only be determined by mathematics."
"We lean on the past experience. I can recall at least the 2007 season, 2010, in which you go to the final Grand Prix and it's in fact the [driver in] third [place] that wins the championship. So we're not going to close the door unless this is closed by mathematics."
All teams this year have had to confront the conundrum of how long to focus on their 2025 season car while also making sure they are as prepared as they can be for the major regulation change scheduled for the 2026 season.
In Formula 1, it's usually the situation that if a team gets it wrong at the start of a new regulation period, it can take a long time to recover. And if they succeed, that benefit can last for a while - look at the Red Bull team in 2022 and 2023, the last time the regulations changed.
The McLaren team began this year with the fastest car, after putting a lot of innovation into their 2025 season design.
They did continue to develop it for a period, 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 next year.
Red Bull have closed the gap since introducing their new underfloor and nose section at the Italian Grand Prix, but the McLaren car stays competitive - team principal Andrea Stella stated he thought Norris had the pace to compete for the victory in Austin had he not finished behind Charles Leclerc.
"We must keep optimising the car performance and continue delivering good race weekends. And from this point of view, if you think of a Grand Prix like Baku, we failed to optimize the performance and we didn't deliver a flawless performance."
"So definitely we have a large opportunity, and the result of this championship and the drivers' championship is in our hands. It's not in someone else's hands."
Initially, it's uncertain the inquiry has an entirely correct premise. It's true that both Lewis Hamilton and Sainz had slightly difficult opening phases of the season, in varying manners, and that they are currently faring significantly improved.
Carlos Sainz and Albon do now look very even. However, it's less certain that, in Lewis Hamilton's case, he is currently the "equal" of Leclerc - or not consistently, at least.
Hamilton has not beaten Leclerc very often at all this season, either in qualifying sessions or Grand Prix.
He is currently much closer than he previously. He is regularly qualifying within a small fraction of a second of Leclerc, but in qualifying it's four-two to Leclerc since the mid-season break.
This last weekend in Austin, on one of Hamilton's favourite circuits, he was a second behind Leclerc when the Monegasque made his pit stop, and dropped 13 seconds over the rest of the race.
In hindsight, Leclerc was on the best race strategy. Regardless, over the championship, and even currently, it's hard to argue that on average Leclerc has not been the superior Ferrari driver this year.
Both Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz have talked about how challenging it is to switch teams, and we have to accept their statements.
Hamilton would not claim even currently that he was completely adjusted to Ferrari - and he is expecting the regulation changes next year will benefit his driving style; he has never particularly liked these venturi cars.
There is a great deal for a racing driver to get their head around when they change constructors, as Lewis Hamilton has described many times this season. But not all struggle in this manner.
Fernando Alonso, for example, was on it from the start of the 2023 when he transferred to the Aston Martin team. And would Verstappen face challenges if he switched teams? I suspect most in Formula 1 would anticipate he wouldn't.
Before the F1 cars are driven for the first time in pre-season testing next season, nobody will understand how the teams are performing in the upcoming season.
The initial session, in Catalunya on 26-30 January, is behind closed doors because the teams wanted to get their heads around their first running of the new engines without the prying eyes of the media.
So the pair of sessions in Sakhir on 11-13 and February 18-20 will be the initial occasion some kind of sense of relative performance emerges.
But, as ever, it's not until the season opener that the true and accurate picture will emerge.
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