Unpopular opinion: McLaren were right to enforce “papaya rules” and the 2025 wdc results prove it.
I think in the last ~50 years we’ve never had a championship-contending driver pairing that got along as well as Lando and Oscar did.
I think in part that’s just down to them both being calmer drivers than e.g. Max, Fernando, Lewis, Charles, George. What I mean is, they’re not the type to turn a fair fight into a nasty fight while the other drivers I mentioned are more like that.
But the other reason why they got along this well was the way McLaren handled their relationship. By making sure that they didn’t needlessly crash into each other and neither of them felt disadvantaged. Sure, it wasn’t fun to watch the team telling their drivers to be more careful whenever they were fighting. And especially at the beginning of the season it also felt unnecessary because they looked like they’d win the championship even if they crashed into each other 5 times over the season.
But Max’s comeback proved that they were right to savor every point they could get, even if that meant sacrificing hard racing. Even with all the conservativeness, they only won by 2 points. If they had one more point-costing collision like Canada, Singapore or the Cota Sprint, they’d have lost the title.
The only thing that wasn’t really a fair move by McLaren was the switch in Monza and not splitting the strategy in Qatar. Everything else (at least what I can recall) was done in favor of securing the most points or making sure the drivers felt they were treated fairly. And if they had done less of that they probably would’ve lost the title to Max.