Red Bull spent the Verstappen peak years winning races that papered over whatever decisions came from the pit wall. When you have a two-second advantage in race pace, strategy is largely academic. So when the field compressed again - as it always does when regulations shift - it exposed which teams had actually been building decision-making infrastructure and which had been coasting on car speed.

McLaren has been building.

What stands out in 2026 isn’t just that McLaren is winning. It’s how they’re winning. They’ve consistently called the undercut before rivals react, covered off the overcut when rivals think they’ve been clever, and - perhaps most importantly - they’ve shown the discipline to hold position during Safety Car periods when other teams panic and pit unnecessarily. That last one is underrated. Panic pitstops under Safety Car have cost multiple teams multiple podiums this season.

The comparison that feels most relevant is Mercedes circa 2015–16. That team won constructors’ titles partly because their strategic layer was operating at a different tempo to everyone else. They saw the race three or four laps ahead. McLaren’s pit wall feels like that right now.

Ferrari Remains the Cautionary Tale

Every conversation about F1 strategy eventually circles back to Ferrari, and not charitably. The Scuderia has the budget, the talent, and - on paper - the organizational depth to be stratically elite. In practice, they still occasionally make calls that look confused even in the moment, let alone in hindsight. The gap between Ferrari’s car performance and their points return this season remains wider than it should be, and a meaningful portion of that gap lives in the pit wall and the radio calls coming off it.

It’s not a personnel issue in any simple sense. It’s structural - the way decisions get escalated, second-guessed, and communicated under pressure. Ferrari hasn’t solved that in a decade. McLaren seems to have.

The Quiet Shift

For years the assumption was that Adrian Newey’s departure from Red Bull was the story of 2025–26 technical transition. And it matters. But the more the season unfolds, the clearer it becomes that aerodynamic leadership isn’t the only thing that wins championships. The team that makes the right call on lap 28 when the tyres are graining and the safety car is out - that team wins titles.

Right now, that team is McLaren.