More so than any of the three drivers battling for this year’s unpredictable Formula 1 world championship, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella knows all too well the thrill and peril of a three-horse title race, as well as the seismic role Interlagos can play in deciding the eventual champion.
Eighteen years ago, the Italian boffin turned team boss was Kimi Raikkonen’s performance engineer at Ferrari in the 2007 season. Heading into the finale in Brazil, Lewis Hamilton (in his rookie year) had a four-point lead over arch-rival and McLaren teammate Fernando Alonso, with Raikkonen seven points off the pace.
Under a points structure which saw 10 points for the race winner down to one point for eighth place, it seemed inconceivable that Hamilton, let alone McLaren, could squander the drivers’ title. Lo and behold, Hamilton endured gearbox issues and could only finish seventh, while Alonso came home third. Raikkonen won the race and with it the championship, by one point to both Hamilton and Alonso. It was a haunting collapse.
Of course, Stella has switched sides and now impressively leads the papaya-clad team, who once again have two drivers vying for the title. While lacking the fierce animosity of Hamilton and Alonso’s partnership, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have notably squabbled in recent weeks amid the progressive intensity of their chase for a maiden title.
With four rounds to go, heading into the penultimate sprint race this weekend in Sao Paulo with 33 points up for grabs, Norris holds a one-point lead over Piastri with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen – the 2025 version of Raikkonen, eyeing an unfathomable comeback – 36 points off the Briton. Yet McLaren will not alter their ‘no number one driver’ mentality now.
“We’re well aware of 2007,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown recently told the Beyond the Grid podcast. “Two drivers tied on points, one gets in the front [at the end]. But we’ve got two drivers who want to win the world championship. We’re playing offence; we’re not playing defence.
“I’d rather go: ‘We did the best we can for our drivers tied on points and the other beat us by one’, than the alternative which is telling one of our drivers right now, when they’re one point away from each other: ‘I know you have a dream to win the world championship but we flipped the coin and you don’t get to do it this year, forget it!’
“That’s not how we go racing. In the event that 2007 happens again, I’d rather have that outcome than all the other outcomes by playing favourites – we won’t do it.”
There you go then: no turning back now. Recently, it has been Norris who has turned a corner, backing up his aggressive move on Piastri in Singapore with a podium in Austin and victory in Mexico. The Australian, meanwhile, is flagging severely in the season-concluding storm. His race results since his win in Zandvoort in August read: third, DNF, fourth, fifth, fifth. Out of tune with the machinery beneath him, Piastri desperately needs to find some consistency again.
But this weekend at the thrilling Interlagos circuit will be most pivotal to Verstappen’s chances of claiming a record-equalling fifth title. The irrepressible Dutchman claimed his greatest-ever victory in Brazil last year, winning from 17th on the grid in torrential weather and outclassing the opposition to take the chequered flag by 20 seconds.
It effectively secured his fourth title, as pole-sitter Norris floundered in the rainstorm. Could a similar scenario this weekend trigger another twist in the championship standings? If Verstappen is to make a substantial inroad in Norris’s advantage, it feels as though it has to be in Brazil, given the points on offer and tendency for dramatic moments.
Hamilton, we should not forget, avenged his 2007 collapse with that dramatic final lap and inaugural championship a year later under the grey skies of Sao Paulo, denying Felipe Massa the title – even despite the Brazilian’s best efforts currently in London’s High Court.
Verstappen’s immense title tilt with Hamilton in 2021 also reached boiling point in Brazil, with the Briton fighting back from a disqualification in qualifying to claim one of his best-ever victories. Plenty of races on the calendar can be pigeon-holed as lacking spectacle; Brazil is rarely one of them.
Brown and Stella should have past iterations at the forefront of their mind, therefore, even if they won’t change tack now.
“If Max is the champion at the end of the year, the important thing is that we can say we have done our best and we have done our best according to the way we go racing,” McLaren’s Stella said, at the last round in Mexico. Ethos over results? It’s seldom a philosophy seen in F1. By Abu Dhabi on 7 December, it may well cost them.
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