Time for team orders? McLaren 'free to race' policy may face biggest test in Mexico

With five races left in the 2025 Formula 1 season, the championship fight has taken on a far sharper edge ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen has clawed back an ominous points deficit, while McLaren has found itself in a position that’s as enviable as it is precarious: two drivers still in the title fight, their chances very much intact.

To add an extra layer of complexity to the situation facing McLaren, the team intends to continue giving both Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris equal opportunities for as long as neither is mathematically out of contention.

That raises the key question: is McLaren right to stick to that ideal in the middle of a title fight with Verstappen breathing down its neck – or is that stance a luxury they may no longer be able to afford?

With five rounds remaining, and given the consistency McLaren’s drivers have displayed during 2025, the Woking team is likely to face a situation in which neither driver is mathematically out of the title race until the very final grand prix in Abu Dhabi.

McLaren boss Andrea Stella is taking the optimistic approach, however, and reckons the remaining races present his team with a good opportunity to open the gap to Verstappen.

“I think we have good tracks coming for our car and we have more that we could have exploited out of our car,” said Stella after the US GP.

“So I think we look at the next five races as opportunities to increase 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.

“So we are not going to close the door unless this is closed by mathematics.”

So, until the numbers decide otherwise, Piastri and Norris are free to race each other.

It’s a line that sounds romantic, even admirable – but the question is whether McLaren can have its cake and eat it too. Is offering absolute fairness to both drivers realistic in the current scenario?

Why Mexico could be pivotal

The critical point for Stella’s philosophy may arrive as early as the Mexican GP this weekend, as a Verstappen win there would turn the screws further.

If Piastri were not to finish second, his title hopes would become alarmingly fragile, particularly for a driver who once had a 104-point gap to Verstappen.

Even if the Australian were to finish second in all the remaining races after Mexico, Piastri would lose the championship should Verstappen win them all.

If Verstappen’s plight of winning all the remaining races sounds unrealistic, then you only need to look at the way he has performed this year with a car that wasn’t that competitive.

Now Red Bull has found its stride, McLaren needs to raise its game, even on tracks that are theoretically favourable for its car.

It’s worth remembering that McLaren hasn’t won a race since August’s Dutch GP, and that Verstappen has won at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez five times in the last seven events there.

If the Red Bull driver wins again, it could become the moment where McLaren’s hand starts to be forced — if not by Andrea Stella, then by someone higher up the chain.

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has long championed letting the drivers race, but watching a title slip away after holding the upper hand all summer would test even the firmest convictions.

An ironic, unfortunate precedent

Stella’s public stance is clear: McLaren wants to let its drivers fight until the very end.

This has won the team plenty of admirers, especially in contrast to the team orders that have coloured so many title battles in the past.

And it’s true that imposing a hierarchy mid-season can carry risks like resentment and destabilisation.

Can McLaren win a world championship against Verstappen without compromising that ideal? History suggests that’s a dangerous bet, as Stella knows that better than most.

“I can recall at least 2007, 2010, in which you go to the last race and it’s actually the third [driver] that wins the championship,” he said in Austin in his defence of not using team orders.

In 2007, McLaren famously let Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso fight freely, and the result was losing the championship to Ferrari rival Kimi Räikkönen by a single point.

Ironically, Stella was Räikkönen’s race engineer back then.

The recent form trend

McLaren’s current dilemma isn’t happening in a vacuum, and Piastri’s recent relative lack of form has been a major contributing factor.

Since the Dutch Grand Prix, Piastri has been outscored by both Norris and Verstappen at every single round.

The Australian has managed 37 points since Zandvoort. That puts him not only behind Verstappen (101) and Norris (57), but also behind George Russell (68) and Charles Leclerc (41).

Piastri’s consistency has given way to weekends where Norris has looked the more complete package.

A mix of tricky qualifying sessions, a few scruffy opening laps, and not quite matching Norris on race pace has turned what was a narrow lead into a gap that is becoming increasingly hard to ignore.

His peaks have shown he’s capable of beating both Norris and Verstappen on merit, but the longer his form dips, the harder it becomes for McLaren to justify treating both drivers as equal title contenders.

The outcome in Mexico needs to be positive for McLaren, but particularly for Piastri.

If Mexico does swing Verstappen’s way, the logic for a subtle shift in McLaren’s approach might become overwhelming. That doesn’t have to mean team orders in the most brutal sense, but it could mean prioritising strategy calls and pitstop windows.

The cleanest way to maximise McLaren’s title shot – from a cold, strategic perspective – would be to back one horse.

While it is the last thing the team, or most fans, want, coming out of Mexico having beaten Verstappen would go a long way towards putting the team orders talk to rest.

If Stella’s stance holds all the way to the end, it would be a triumph of idealism in what’s often a cut-throat championship.

But if Verstappen leaves Mexico with another victory and a sharper mathematical edge, McLaren may find it harder to respect its own principles.