The top Red Bull driver who is fighting for a fifth straight F1 world championship now knows where he will be driving in the future.

What makes this tough for McLaren is the context. Norris has been their guy since 2019. He stayed loyal when the car was barely fighting for points. He was patient when others — Carlos Sainz, Daniel Ricciardo — came and went. He’s also just 25. This was supposed to be his era.

Red Bull have introduced a new front wing configuration at the Belgian Grand Prix, which features changes to the camber and incidence of the mainplane and secondary flap, with the most obvious visual changes to be found in the outboard section (green arrows), whereby there’s some small changes to the twist geometry.

A new Red Bull era begins under Mekies at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix. He was appointed after 18 months at Racing Bulls. He worked at Ferrari for five years, as deputy team principal and racing director, and at the F.I.A., which governs Formula 1, for four years, initially as safety director and then deputy race director.

Oscar Piastri convincingly secured pole position for the sprint race in Belgium, leaving Max Verstappen with no real answer. According to Olav Mol, McLaren’s performance gain may be down to them adopting a clever tactic previously used by Red Bull Racing.