TIL #84: A Fragile Reality
McLaren is meddling with forces it doesn't understand
The Installation Lap is a weekly Substack column dedicated to helping Americans develop a deeper appreciation for Formula 1.
For all that is big about Formula 1, the money, the gigantic global car manufacturers, the personalities, the horsepower…the reality of the sport is that F1 is all about smallness. Fine margins are everything. Incremental progress dominates. The physics of reality and the rulebook are constantly pushing back against engineers and drivers, almost actively preventing them from achieving their aims. This is a sport where tenths and hundredths of a second really matter. This is a world where chasing marginal gains at the expense of human endurance and with little regard to cost is not only the norm, but it is one of the only reliable ways forward. This obsession with minutia is part of the DNA of every team on the grid. It doesn’t matter if you’re at the back or the sharp end of the field. Little things are everything.
In a championship fight, this obsession with the small stuff can become so intense that teams and drivers can appear to penetrate another layer of reality. It’s as if there is another temporal dimension, adjacent to our own, that is only accessible through relentlessness and single-minded determination. This other dimension is the place Nico Rosberg went to win his sole championship in 2016. When he was losing weight, cutting his socks, chopping his seat, and stripping paint off his helmet, it was to get light enough, small enough, to slip out of our temporal order and enter the place where only champions can live. This other dimension is where the great laps are laid down. Lewis Hamilton’s 2018 qualifying lap around Singapore was done within this other layer of reality. Max Verstappen’s drive in Brazil 2024, or his qualifying lap in Japan this year, are just two examples of Max pushing into this other place. People like Max and Lewis are regular visitors to this other plane. It’s a known territory to them, and when they can’t access it, they get angry and frustrated.
Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix gave us our first real look at Oscar and Lando going wheel-to-wheel in their championship fight. Lando, of course, came out on top. He had been a step ahead of Oscar all weekend long, a rarity for Lando. The two raced closely and cleanly in those opening laps. The only bobble of any kind was Oscar making a half-hearted lunge into turn four and locking up. He just missed clipping the back of Lando. It’s the little things. It was made clear to Oscar, over the radio, that the team didn’t much care for that. Oscar apologized after the race. In many respects, this was a perfect weekend for McLaren. Their cars led nearly every session of the weekend, except for FP1. In the race, both Oscar and Lando rode off into the distance, making the two McLarens look like they were racing in another formula as compared to everyone else. Their car was brilliant around the Red Bull Ring. Zak Brown and Andrea Stella’s now-famous “Papaya Rules” held their ground. Oscar and Lando raced cleanly and respectfully. This, I submit, is McLaren’s greatest weakness.
These Papaya Rules appear to be an attempt at creating a bulwark against either driver pushing into this other place, this adjacent layer of reality. It will not work.
The McLaren of Zak and Andrea is a nice, friendly, upbeat McLaren. It’s a brightly colored marketing confection filled with happy warriors and great social media and marketing chops. It’s also a McLaren of deep technical and engineering excellence. They are a great team. They’ve built a great car. And they’ve got two great drivers politely and cleanly marching their way towards a championship, for one of them. This is a stark contrast to the old McLaren. The Ron Dennis McLaren. Those McLaren teams were cold, ruthless, and inhospitable. Their black, grey, and white liveries gave them the look of The Empire. Austere. Formidable. I’m certain Ron Dennis smiled when championships were won in the late 1990s, but I don’t remember it. I only remember his scowl. His perpetual look of annoyance and dissatisfaction. A great deal has changed at McLaren over the last twenty years, including the belief that a nice, low-cost, low-contact championship can be won with two teammates fighting for the title. That would never have occurred to the Ron Dennis McLaren teams.
Despite how we speak colloquially about F1 championships, they are not won. Grandma wins at Bingo on Thursday nights. F1 championships are seized. A driver, with a championship within sight, reaches for it. They extend themselves in order to grasp it. Often at the expense of everything and everyone else, including, sometimes, their team. Think of Max Verstappen’s drive in Brazil 2024, as mentioned previously. Max, on that day, grabbed the championship while everyone else was just trying to keep their cars on track. Oscar and Lando were nowhere in that race, while Max was transcendent. Or think of Sebastian Vettel in 2012, also in Brazil. Vettel made an all-time great recovery drive after a disastrous start that saw him knocked from P4 down to P24 before the end of the first lap. Seb quite simply refused to surrender that day. In mixed conditions, he drove a tenacious, white-knuckle, four-pit-stop race back to P6 and grabbed his third world title. At some point this year, one or both McLaren drivers are going to be in a position to seize the championship. There will be a moment when someone, pushing, willing themselves into that other place, will be able to grab the title for themselves at the expense of their teammate, and likely against the wishes of their team. It’s going to cost something to win the title this year, and whoever is willing to pay that price, reach that high, disregard politeness, convention, as well as time and space, that person will be champion.
This exceedingly polite racing from Oscar and Lando will not hold. McLaren has been lucky to date. Lando’s mistake in Montreal was clean and unequivocal. Oscar was faster that weekend and made fewer mistakes. Lando quickly took all the blame for his mistake and paid a high price with a DNF. In Austria, it was Lando with the advantage. Oscar, this time, made a small mistake at turn four and apologized. It’s all been very clear and polite. This peace is much more fragile than Zak Brown would like to believe. All these little moments are accumulating, building up. Little things are everything.
We’ve talked previously about a crucial skill of F1 champions, past and present: Damage limitation. The fastest car in F1, which McLaren surely has, will win races. But race wins are only one part of what it takes to win a driver’s championship. How do you perform on days when you cannot win? In this regard, both Oscar and Lando have been quite good. Oscar has won five races, and Lando has now won three. On the days Lando has won, Oscar’s average finishing position has been P4.6. (Oscar’s P9 finish in Melbourne drags down that average.) When Oscar has won, Lando’s average finishing position has been P2.6. In terms of simply finishing ahead of your teammate, Oscar currently holds the advantage. In eleven races, Oscar has finished ahead of Lando six times. Lando has finished ahead of Oscar five times. This title fight is closer than it feels. Little by little, the pressure is building.
Unless one McLaren driver goes on a run of race wins, this fragile and fanciful truce McLaren has engineered between their drivers will crumble. Part of what makes it possible to break into that other reality, where only champions can go, is a rupture to this reality. And rupture it will. There will be a moment when it is to one driver’s advantage to break the Papaya Rules.
At some point this season, the choice will be in the hands of one driver at one moment in time: What am I willing to do to beat this guy and become champion? The small, quiet answer to that question will register as a detonation for the rest of us. Little things are everything.
McLaren will meet their destiny on the road they’ve taken to avoid it.
Good view… like the movie IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS
My wife has slowly been sucked into F1 and is pulling for Lando.
Excellent piece of writing.
Will we be treated to a F1 The Movie review?