Crucial Red Bull advantage revealed in F1 title fight

The inexperience of the current McLaren team compared to rivals Red Bull has been noted as a key element in this year's title fight outcome.

McLaren is currently pursuing its first constructors' championship since 1998, holding a 26-point lead over Ferrari.

However, its drivers' title prospects are hanging by a thread as Max Verstappen stretched his lead over Lando Norris to 62 points following his dominant drive in Brazil earlier this month.

The Dutchman is on course for his fourth consecutive title while McLaren is simultaneously looking to end its long-standing title drought.

Speaking on the most recent episode of the RacingNews365 podcast, lead editor Ian Parkes highlighted McLaren's management and engineering set-up is much younger compared to Red Bull.

“Of course, Red Bull has the upper hand, it knows what to do, where the pitfalls are, how to course correct just the smallest mistake,” Parkes said.

“Whereas McLaren, you’ve got a relatively new team principal in Andrea Stella. You've got a driver in Lando Norris competing for a drivers’ championship for the first time.

“You’ve got all those people behind Andrea, many of whom are relatively new faces that weren't there 16 years ago [when McLaren last won the drivers' title].

“There’s going to be people brought in from other teams and they will have had a good idea as to what it takes, of course.

“But overall, as a unit, as a group, as a team, this is McLaren embarking on something completely different. So I think there's going to be a huge learning curve for McLaren.”

McLaren backed to take 'enormous amount' from F1 title fight

McLaren has pushed its way to the front of the F1 grid in a short period after spending the early races last year as a backmarker.

As it thrusts itself back into front-running contention, Parkes has backed McLaren to take key learnings into the winter break, whatever the end result in the title fight.

“Regardless of what happens at the end of this season, they will take an enormous amount out of it,” he said. “Lando will take an enormous amount out of it. 

“The difference between Lando and Max, just drawing on them specifically, and if you look back on Max's season, it’s very hard to pinpoint where a result might have got away from him, where he could have maybe scored a few points extra.

“[There are] very, very few. He's barely put a wheel out of place all season.

“And then you look at Lando and the mistakes he has made, even when he was leading, which is one of the biggest points, at the Singapore Grand Prix. He was comfortable.

“That's probably where McLaren has been at its best at any race this season, a comfortable grand prix and yet he still almost put that car in the wall - not once but twice - when he's got a car with that pace advanatge. So he still has a lot to learn.”