Last Updated on November 28 2025, 8:57 am

The McLaren Formula One team were looking forward to the weekend in Qatar as they had identified it as one of the circuits which most suited their MCL39 car. But they now face a nightmare weekend following allegations of cheating and now incremental scrutiny from the FIA.

The Losail International Circuit in Qatar, with its high-speed corners, was expected to play to the strengths of the McLaren car’s design, which generally performs well on tracks with s significant amount of high speed corners.

Lando Norris claimed pole position there last year for the Sprint, although he allowed his team mate Oscar Piastri through to take the victory given the Australian had done something similar for earlier in Sao Paulo. Come Qatar, Verstappen had claimed the driver’s championship, so Norris returned the favour. Join the discussion below

Marko doesn’t believe Newey is team principal material for Aston Martin

 

 

McLaren hopes pinned on Qatar

With Max Verstappen closing in, McLaren team boss Andreas Stella discussed the up coming circuits where he expected their car design philosophy to work better. “I would expect that Austin will still be a bit of a struggle for us because the corners are tight in many braking areas. Our tracks still remain the likes of Brazil, Qatar, Abu Dhabi,” he revealed.

Last time out in Las Vegas, both McLaren cars were disqualified for running too low to the ground. This is calculated from the wear on the skid block underneath the car. It starts the Grand Prix at 10mm thick and must be no less than 9mm come the chequered flag.

Whilst many F1 analysts have suggested the excess wear was the width of a hair, in terms of the percentage of the tolerance allowed, Norris car was 12% over at its most worn point, whilst Piastri’s was  26%. Formula One engineering tolerances are incredibly accurate and similar to that in spacecraft design.

The disqualifications cost Lando Norris 18 points and Oscar Piastri 12 and having taken the win in Sin City, Verstappen is now level with the Australian and 24 points behind Norris. Team principal Andrea Stella issued a statement after the team were found guilty of breaching the regulations: “We apologise to Lando and Oscar for the loss of points today, at a critical time in their championship campaigns after two strong performances from them all weekend.” Join the discussion below

Aston Martin CEO role for Horner

 

 

FIA investigate allegations of cheating

The previous outing in Brazil, the FIA became aware of the fact that McLaren, along with other unidentified teams, was using trickery to ensure they could run the car as low as possible yet still pass the FIA’s stringent tests. Japanese media source as-web.jp reports that several team principals and technical directors had approached the FIA after suspecting some teams were using heat-enhanced skid blocks.

The lower this breed of F1 car can be run, the more downforce it picks up through the corners, which improves the tyre wear, along with improving the cornering speeds.

Underneath the car is a plank together with titanium skid blocks, and the FIA discovered McLaren and others were using a titanium compound which expanded when heated up. The expanded blocks then protect the plank, which sits in a kind of recess, meaning the car can be run lower than otherwise would have been possible.

Red Bull have complained regularly throughout the season that McLaren have been using some trickery which gives them far superior tyre wear and therefore an unfair strategic advantage when compared to their rivals. Join the discussion below

Marko mocks Mclaren over Vegas

 

 

 

FIA officer orders removal of illegal car parts

As happened to Ferrari after Lewis Hamilton was disqualified in China for excessive wear of the plank, the team subsequently were forced to raise the height of the car, which cost a significant amount of performance.

McLaren too are likely to be forced into this decision, and in Qatar this will be particularly punitive, potentially handing a huge advantage to Red Bull and Max Verstappen, who are not thought to be of the team’s using expanding compound trickery.

Further, after the disqualifications in Las Vegas, the FIA are said to be “monitoring closely” the papaya liveried team and the abrasive surface and high speed corners were already a technician’s nightmare in terms of skid block wear and tyre degradation.

Jo Bauer, the FIA’s technical delegate, is reported as examining all the skid blocks prior to qualifying and, during his investigations, found devices fitted to the underfloor which were clearly intended only to heat the skid blocks.

Ex McLaren Champ weighs in on the Norris–Piastri rumours

 

 

McLaren’s magical tyre wear explained

The teams accused of this were ordered to remove the devices prior to qualifying in Brazil, which is why McLaren were flying in the Sprint, but Verstappen was much quicker during the Grand Prix.

Come Las Vegas, where the circuit is bumpy, and the non-heated skid blocks again become a challenge, none of the teams were able to perform race simulation long runs due to red flags and wet weather in practice. So McLaren were blind as to how to adjust the ride height of their car to cope with skid blocks, which were not expanding, given they had no data from the previous race weekends.

Red Bull were onto McLaren much earlier in the season, claiming their lack of tyre wear was almost magical, but they came to the wrong conclusion about how it was being done. The Milton Keynes team believed McLaren was using some kind of water cooling effect on the tyres, but the expanding skid blocks would have a similar effect.

Whether the FIA could consider throwing the team out of the championship is unclear, but there is precedent for this kind of punishment, as McLaren found to their cost in 2007.

Ignored the warnings: McLaren & Norris already knew about plank wear issues on the formation lap

 

FIA under pressure to act

Had the team not been using the alleged expanding titanium blocks, their runaway performances at certain venues this season would have been hugely compromised, and so it could be argued the championship has been corrupted by McLaren.

Unlike the bendy wings rows in previous seasons, this is a black and white transgression of the FIA’s technical regulations. The intent is also clear from the discovery of the heating devices, but it may require one team to protest McLaren’s results to the FIA for them to consider throwing them and their drivers out of the 2026 Formula One championships.

Further, Felipe Massa is bringing a high profile lawsuit against the FIA for refusing to act when they knew the results of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix were rigged. The race in the City State should have been scratched from that season’s results, which would have made Massa, not Hamilton, the F1 drivers’ champion.

With the eyes of the world on the outcome of this legal action, the FIA will want to prove today that it is squeaky clean and that its governance of Formula One complies with proper jurisprudence.

 

 

 

NEXT ARTICLE – Marko reveals Red Bull’s 2026 “big advantage”

With a crucial race weekend coming up in Qatar, the Red Bull and McLaren Formula One race teams are fully focused on a championship battle royal as Max Verstappen attempts themes audacious come back in F1 history.

Yet back at base, the rest of the teams are now fully focused on the huge technical regulation changes coming in 2026. By now, the power trains are mostly locked in, as is much of the car’s design, as in just nine weeks’ time the new breed of F1 cars will take to the track in Barcelona.

There’s been a big amount of paddock chatter as to who is in the best shape to take on F1’s new era, with the Mercedes self promotion PR team in full flow. The Brackley based team aced the previous big engine rules change in 2014, mostly due to an unlimited budget granted by Stuttgart together with their engineers finding the best solution to the MGU-H heat recovery systems, which others failed to master… READ MORE

 

 

 

F1 Live Today: News, Rumours & Analysis – 27 Nov 2025