McLaren's come under heavy fire (and been subject to plenty of conspiracy theories) for its attempts to keep things fair between its team-mates and championship rivals Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri during the 2025 Formula 1 season.
Its mishandling of the Qatar Grand Prix did nothing to quieten the noise - and particularly the suggestions of bias or favouritism towards Norris in his quest for a first world title.
The theory is that if McLaren had done the right thing for its overall race and brought both cars in during the lap seven safety car like every other team, Norris would've been the one disadvantaged by double stacking behind Piastri, but Piastri would've still beaten Max Verstappen to the race win. So under the ‘pretence' of being fair, it denied Piastri a chance to close further on Norris in the championship.
But on The Race F1 Podcast this week, Scott Mitchell-Malm pointed out some flaws in that allegation.
"If you subscribe to the view that what they did was to prevent Norris losing more ground to Piastri in the championship, you have to remember that by doing that, they've hurt Norris anyway by allowing Verstappoen to close the gap as much as he has," Mitchell-Malm argued.
"And I would argue - and I don't mean any disrespect to Piastri by this - but letting Verstappen get a lot closer and into a position where he wins the race in Abu Dhabi and Norris doesn't finish on the podium and Verstappen's champion, is way more damaging to Norris's prospects.
"You basically have to believe that McLaren wants Lando to win the championship and not Oscar, but also that they'd rather have Verstappen win the title over Piastri, and that's just not the case."
The Qatar result leaves Norris 12 points ahead of Verstappen and 16 in front of Piastri. The claims of bias or favouritism from its drivers' fanbases are unlikely to get quieter building up to the decider of a season that each of Norris and Piastri looked like they would settle in plenty of time at various junctures earlier in the year.
What if Norris had been delayed?
Elsewhere on the podcast, Mark Hughes pointed out that had Norris been disadvantaged by queuing behind Piastri in the pits, that would have been in line with teams' general practice of their lead driver on track having priority on strategy - so neither Norris nor his fanbase would've been justified in any suggestions of bias against them.
Having one of its title contenders running behind the other in a situation where the second car was certain to be disadvantaged simply made McLaren's ethos of fairness harder to navigate in Qatar.
"Lando wouldn't have had the grounds to say he was treated unfairly there," said Hughes of a scenario in which Norris fell down the order queuing in the pits while Piastri still won.
"He was the one that qualified behind, he was the one that lost a position on the first lap, therefore he wasn't entitled to priority, so I don't think it would be a betrayal of that principle."
