The champagne has barely dried on Lando Norris’s racing suit, and the echoes of McLaren’s Constructor’s Championship celebrations are still fading, but a chilling silence has descended upon the Woking-based team. On the surface, 2025 was the year McLaren finally returned to the summit of Formula 1. Lando Norris is the World Champion, ending the Verstappen era by a razor-thin two-point margin. The team secured its second consecutive Constructor’s title. By all traditional metrics, it was a golden year.
But beneath the surface, a dangerous gamble is unfolding—one that has McLaren CEO Zak Brown admitting to genuine anxiety as the sport hurtles toward the seismic regulatory reset of 2026.
While fans were fixated on the nail-biting conclusion of the 2025 season, a silent strategic war was being waged in the factories of Woking and Milton Keynes. It is a war of philosophy, resource allocation, and nerve. And now, as the covers are about to come off the next generation of F1 cars, fears are mounting that McLaren may have made a catastrophic calculation that could hand total control of the new era back to Max Verstappen and Red Bull.
The “Ruthless” Strategic Divide
To understand the panic, one must rewind to the middle of the 2025 season. The McLaren MCL39 was a beast, the benchmark car that won seven of the first ten races. It looked untouchable. It was at this moment of supreme dominance that McLaren made one of the boldest calls in modern F1 history: they turned off the tap.
Engineering Director Neil Houldey confirmed the decision was mathematical and ruthless. Upgrades had reached a point of “diminishing returns,” where finding a mere 30 milliseconds of pace was considered a triumph. Rather than burning cash and wind tunnel hours chasing marginal gains for a car that was already winning, McLaren diverted all resources to the 2026 project—a project defined by the most disruptive regulation changes in over a decade.
“On paper, it was logical,” explains a team insider. “Why polish a trophy winner when you can build a dynasty for the next five years?”
But Red Bull Racing, wounded and cornered, did not follow the script. Instead of conceding 2025 to prepare for 2026, they doubled down. They pushed upgrades for the RB21 deep into the winter, allowing Max Verstappen to claw back a seemingly insurmountable deficit, taking the title fight to the final lap of the final race.
This creates the central tension of the upcoming season: McLaren sacrificed visible performance for theoretical future gains. Red Bull sacrificed future preparation for immediate competitive sharpness.
The 2026 Reset: A New Battlefield
The year 2026 is not merely an evolution of the current cars; it is a hard reset. The sport is introducing active aerodynamics, entirely new power units with revised energy deployment systems, and a fundamentally different aerodynamic philosophy. The data harvested from the ground-effect era of 2022-2025 is suddenly worth far less.
McLaren’s bet is that by arriving at this new battlefield early, with more iterations and data simulations than their rivals, they will hold a decisive advantage. They are banking on the idea that Red Bull’s distraction in the 2025 title fight left them behind the curve on the new regulations.
However, Zak Brown’s recent comments suggest that this confidence is shaking. He has openly admitted that the team is in a “waiting game,” paralyzed by the uncertainty of whether their theoretical lead exists in reality.
“We played the long game,” Brown hinted in a recent statement. “But in Formula 1, the long game is only genius if you win. If you don’t, it’s just a missed opportunity.”
The Ford Factor: Red Bull’s Hidden Ace
What amplifies McLaren’s anxiety is a rumor that is growing louder in the paddock: the Red Bull-Ford partnership.
For the first time, Red Bull is manufacturing its own power units with the backing of American giant Ford. While rivals initially viewed this as a risk—taking on the complexity of engine manufacturing in-house—there is a growing belief that the program has been significantly underestimated.
The specific demands of the 2026 hybrid engines, which rely heavily on electrical deployment and battery efficiency, align perfectly with the technical resources Ford brings to the table. If Red Bull has unlocked a power advantage to match their aerodynamic genius, McLaren’s head start on the chassis side might be irrelevant.
Unlike McLaren, who are customer teams relying on Mercedes power, Red Bull has total integration between chassis and engine. They enter 2026 with a system built entirely around one man: Max Verstappen.
Cracks in the Papaya Armor
The anxiety at McLaren isn’t just about Red Bull’s potential; it’s about their own proven fragilities. The 2025 season, despite the silverware, was not a masterclass in operation. It was a “stress test,” and McLaren frequently buckled.
The laundry list of errors is concerning for a team aiming to establish a dynasty. The double disqualification in Las Vegas. The safety car misjudgment in Qatar. The sluggish pit stops and the technical retirement in Zandvoort. These weren’t just bad luck; they were operational failures that reopened the door for Verstappen when it should have been slammed shut.
Zak Brown has been brutally honest with the fanbase, refusing to deflect blame. He frames these errors as necessary growing pains, forcing the team to mature under the crucible of championship pressure. But psychological strength is only one piece of the puzzle.
“We were fast, but we were not flawless,” Brown admitted. In 2026, with the field reset and technical advantages likely to be slim, “fast but flawed” will not be enough to hold off a vengeful Max Verstappen.
The Civil War: Norris vs. Piastri
Perhaps the most volatile variable in McLaren’s 2026 equation is the internal dynamic between their drivers. While Red Bull operates with a singular, ruthless focus on Verstappen, McLaren is attempting a juggling act that has destroyed many teams in the past: managing two number-one drivers.
Oscar Piastri is no longer a rookie with potential; he is a proven predator. In 2025, he quietly emerged as one of the most complete drivers on the grid, leading the championship at various points and demonstrating a level of composure that rivals veterans with a decade of experience.
Having two title contenders is a blessing for the Constructor’s Championship but a curse for the Driver’s title. In a season where development paths will diverge rapidly, and driver feedback is critical for refining the new 2026 concepts, internal harmony is paramount. If Norris and Piastri begin taking points off each other, or if the team is split on development direction, the singular focus of the Verstappen-Red Bull machine could tear them apart.
The Verdict: A Golden Era or a One-Hit Wonder?
As the F1 world holds its breath for the Bahrain pre-season testing, the narrative is far from written. McLaren’s dominance at the end of the ground-effect era guarantees them nothing in the new world of active aero.
They stand at a precipice. If their data is correct, their early switch to 2026 development will see them unleash a car that is seconds faster than the competition, securing a dynasty that rivals the Mercedes era. But if Red Bull has managed to stay competitive while building a monster engine with Ford, McLaren’s gamble will be viewed as one of the great strategic blunders of modern racing.
Zack Brown knows this. The team knows this. And most importantly, Max Verstappen knows this.
The “waiting game” is almost over. And for McLaren, the silence before the storm is deafening.