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The battle for the drivers’ championship continues to intensify as Formula 1 prepares for this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix.
Kimi Antonelli’s lead over Mercedes team-mate George Russell has been reduced to 25 points, with Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton widening the gap to seven points.
Ahead of the race at Spa-Francorchamps, BBC Sport’s F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.
I am struggling to see how Max Verstappen will go to McLaren. They never have a number one driver and last year Max was laughing at McLaren’s decisions when trying to be fair to Lando Norris and Oscar Piastre, for example for a late pit stop at Monza. To make things fair, Max refuses a team order for his teammate to go through the past (as he didn’t in Brazil 2022). Would he really tear McLaren apart if he went there? – Tim
The first thing that can be said here is that McLaren Racing CEO Zach Brown has done his best to reject the idea of Max Verstappen moving to McLaren in the future.
Brown said his recent talks with Verstappen’s management at the British Grand Prix “got nowhere”, adding that “I’m very happy with my two drivers” and that “what I couldn’t offer him (Verstappen) was a seat in my race car”.
Regardless, Verstappen and his management are exploring their options and McLaren is the team they are considering.
Verstappen is contracted to Red Bull until the end of 2028 but has a performance clause in his contract which means he can leave at the end of this year if he wants to.
That clause doesn’t come into effect until October, so there’s plenty of time before something happens, and Verstappen has yet to make a decision, sources told BBC Sport.
If Verstappen wants to go to McLaren, could it work? Well, first, Brown must find a way to eliminate one of the current drivers, world champion Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri.
If he can do that, the fundamental basis of McLaren’s philosophy is fairness. Their drivers are allowed to compete with each other and the team only intervenes in special situations like those Last year, it arose a few times.
It’s worth noting that this is a different approach to the one normally taken at Red Bull, but it’s similar to that used by another team Verstappen has spoken to, Mercedes.
Verstappen won’t change his approach to join the team, but why would he have a problem with it?
I’m sure he’ll bounce back to win any fight against his teammates.
Equally, any team that takes on Verstappen will be under a level of stress they cannot face with any other driver and will test their management skills.
But while some may argue Verstappen’s monologue, no-compromise approach is reason to be wary of signing him, F1 teams are ultimately about performance. And signing Verstappen is a guarantee of maximum performance in the cockpit, certainly the most consistent.
That could be a very attractive proposition for McLaren, whose customer engine team is facing some of the weaknesses in a way it hasn’t been in the past, looking for the best they can.
Lewis Hamilton, 41, recently won a race for Ferrari. 44-year-old Fernando Alonso has consistently outperformed his younger team-mate and, given a comparable car, would probably win races too. Are the cars easy to drive or do some drivers have more longevity with their high level driving skills? – Matthew
It’s true that Grands Prix are less physically demanding than they were in the mid-2000s, when fuel was required and the tire wars and races flat from start to finish.
Tire and energy management, that is no longer the case.
Don’t get me wrong though, driving an F1 car is still a physically demanding experience, and Hamilton and Alonso are in fine form.
The answer is not physical, but mental, as long as the racing driver is able to meet the physical demands as he gets older.
Drivers lose the desire and determination to push themselves to the limit in an extremely dangerous environment.
Every time you get into the car, you have to really want it to work at the highest level in F1 to drive to the limit, no matter how competitive it is. And Hamilton and Alonso remain fully committed, and loving in what they do.
Combine that with their differing skill levels – after all, they’re two of the greatest drivers of all time – and you have every reason to keep delivering as you do.
But the fact that so few people have been able to do this over the years shows how unusual this is and how unusual what they are doing.
Spa is considered by many to be one of the greatest circuits of all time. What makes it so good? And will these 2026 cars do well there? – Clive
