Red Bull's driver Max Verstappen narrowed the difference in the drivers' championship by winning both the sprint race and main races at the United States Grand Prix.
McLaren's Lando Norris came second on Sunday to reduce Oscar Piastri's points advantage to 14 points with five races left to go.
Four-times world champion Max Verstappen is now just 40 points trailing Piastri approaching this upcoming Mexican Grand Prix.
The McLaren team are fully conscious of the obstacle they encounter with Max Verstappen and Red Bull in the championship battle this year, but they see no reason to modify their approach to managing the team.
They will continue to give both drivers the optimal opportunity they can and operate the team on a foundation of fairness and equanimity.
"This represents the approach we plan racing. This remains the philosophy in which we approach racing, and we aim to remain fair, and we want to apply equal treatment to both drivers."
Team boss Andrea Stella is a veteran of many championship fights. He won the championship as engineer to Raikkonen in the 2007 season when the Ferrari driver recovered 17 points under the previous points system in two races to win the title, while McLaren collapsed.
And he missed out on the title as race engineer to Fernando Alonso in 2010, when Ferrari messed up their race strategy at the final race of the championship and enabled Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull to snatch the championship from their grasp.
Andrea Stella said after the Grand Prix in Austin: "We view the remaining five Grands Prix as opportunities to extend the gap on Max. And when it comes to having to make a call as to a driver, this will only be led by mathematics."
"We lean on the past experience. I can recall at least the 2007 season, 2010, in which you go to the last race and it's actually the [driver in] third [place] that wins the title. So we're not going to make decisions unless this is closed by mathematics."
Every team this season have had to face the dilemma of for how long to focus on their 2025 season car while also ensuring they are as prepared as they can be for the major rules overhaul coming for the 2026 season.
In Formula 1, it's usually the situation that if a team makes mistakes at the start of a new rules cycle, it can take a long time to recover. And if they succeed, that benefit can last for a while - consider the Red Bull team in 2022 and 2023, the most recent occasion the rules changed.
McLaren started this season with the best car, after investing a lot of technical development into their 2025 design.
They continued to improve it for a period, but were experiencing reduced benefits. So when looking at the bang for buck they were getting on their 2025 car compared to 2026, it became an straightforward choice to redirect attention to next year.
The Red Bull team have closed the gap since introducing their new underfloor and front wing at the Italian Grand Prix, but the McLaren stays competitive - team principal Stella said he thought Lando Norris had the pace to compete for the victory in Texas had he not ended up following Charles Leclerc.
"We must continue maximising the car performance and continue delivering good weekends. And from this perspective, if you think of a Grand Prix like Baku, we failed to optimize the performance and we didn't execute a flawless race."
"Therefore we have a significant chance, and the outcome of this season and the driver's title is in our hands. It's not placed in another team's control."
Initially, it's uncertain the inquiry has an completely accurate basis. It's correct that both Hamilton and Carlos Sainz had somewhat difficult opening phases of the championship, in different ways, and that they are now performing significantly improved.
Carlos Sainz and Albon do now look quite balanced. However, it's not so clear that, in Hamilton's case, he is currently the "match" of Charles Leclerc - or not consistently, at least.
Lewis Hamilton has failed to outperform Charles Leclerc very often at all this year, either in qualifying sessions or race.
He is currently much closer than he previously. He is regularly setting times within a few hundredths of a second of his teammate, but in qualifying battles it's four-two to Charles Leclerc since the summer break.
This previous weekend in Texas, on one of Lewis Hamilton's favourite circuits, he was a second slower than his teammate when the Monegasque made his pit stop, and dropped 13 seconds over the remaining portion of the race.
In hindsight, Charles Leclerc was on the optimal race strategy. Regardless, over the championship, and even currently, it's difficult to argue that on balance Charles Leclerc has not been the superior Ferrari racer this year.
Each of Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz have discussed how difficult it is to switch teams, and we have to take them at their word.
Hamilton would not say even now that he was completely adjusted to Ferrari - and he is expecting the regulation changes next year will suit him; he has never particularly liked these ground-effect vehicles.
There is a lot for a driver to understand and adapt to when they switch teams, as Hamilton has described repeatedly this season. But not every driver faces difficulties in this manner.
Alonso, for example, was performing well from the start of the 2023 when he transferred to the Aston Martin team. And would Verstappen face challenges if he changed constructors? I suspect most in F1 would anticipate he wouldn't.
Before the cars are driven for the first time in winter testing next year, no-one will know how the constructors are performing in the upcoming season.
The first test, in Barcelona on 26-30 January, is behind closed doors because the teams wanted to understand their initial track time of the power unit changes without the prying eyes of the media.
So the two tests in Bahrain on February 11-13 and 18-20 February will be the initial occasion some kind of sense of comparative speed becomes apparent.
But, as ever, it's not until the first race that the complete and precise picture will become clear.
