Abu Dhabi — For a title-decider weekend, the room was strangely calm.
McLaren chief Zak Brown and Red Bull’s Laurent Mekies shared a pre-weekend press conference on Friday that felt less like a pre-fight weigh-in and more like two CEOs talking best practices. No jabs, no sly digs, not even a raised eyebrow. Just a lot of respect and a couple of pats on the back for jobs well done.
It jarred because we’ve been conditioned to expect turbulence at this stage. Wolff vs. Horner gave us a decade of theatre. Even Brown vs. Horner in 2024 had texture — friction at times, sharp elbows, the odd slippery comment. This? Polite. Almost studiously so.
There are reasons, of course. Red Bull’s mid-year reset shifted the mood music. The Austrian parent company tightened its grip, and Mekies — an engineer by trade and temperament — doesn’t do pantomime villain. He’s measured, process-first. Asked about the prospect of team tactics or rough edges on Sunday, he waved the conversation away. Racing will be clean, he said. As if it were obvious. As if it were uninteresting.
That’s the thing: the storyline feels tidied up. Between the team bosses, and, notably, between the three drivers aiming at the biggest trophy in the sport — Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, and Max Verstappen — no one’s fanning flames. No one’s playing the old hits.
Verstappen wandered in on Thursday sounding like a man who stumbled onto a title fight he hadn’t planned for. “I’m very relaxed. Nothing to lose,” he shrugged, reminding everyone he already has “four at home.” He called the second half of Red Bull’s season enjoyable after the early frustrations, and framed this weekend as a pleasant extra. A bonus round. He’s either at peace or bluffing with a straight face.
McLaren’s pair delivered similar notes. Norris said if it doesn’t go his way, he’ll go again next year. No melodrama, no grand declarations. Piastri’s lines were just as cool. Inside the team, Andrea Stella has managed the intra-garage duel with almost clinical restraint. No cracks showing, no oxygen for a rivalry to catch light.
Is it dull? Not necessarily — but it’s different. F1 used to wear its nerves outside the fireproofs. Now, the new class of team bosses — the Mekies, Komatsus, Permanes of the paddock — prefer the soldering iron to the sledgehammer. The corporate era demands clean edges, and you can feel that in the messaging. Less bark, more benchmark.
Of course, this could all be theatre of a quieter kind. Fernando Alonso, who’s played more title endgames than most, was right this week: the games never stop. It’s body language in the driver briefing, it’s who looks at the floor in FP2, it’s who talks about pressure and who refuses to. Sometimes the loudest move is pretending you don’t care.
And maybe that’s the play here. If you’re Verstappen, breezing in with house money is the ultimate flex. If you’re McLaren, showing harmony and control as you try to close a double-title loop says: we’ve got this, whichever number on the garage wins it. It’s a message to the other side — and to your own — that Sunday won’t shake you.
Still, you can’t help missing a little knife-edge tension. Abu Dhabi has hosted enough last acts to know what the room feels like when one wrong step sends everything off the cliff. This doesn’t have that crackle. It’s composed, it’s curated. It might even be honest. But it’s not box office yet.
Maybe that’s fine. Maybe the fireworks stay in the garage until five lights go out. Because whatever the tone of the pressers, the truth gets written at 300 km/h — in the braking zones, in how deep someone dares on cold tyres, in whether a pit wall blinks first when a Safety Car drops a grenade into the strategy.
Brown and Mekies can swap compliments. Norris and Piastri can keep the lid on it. Verstappen can call it a bonus. Come Sunday night, none of that language will matter if the margins tighten and the title swings on a coin toss. That’s the sport’s great equaliser: when it really counts, everyone cares.
If Abu Dhabi’s buildup felt too polite, it sets up the simplest kind of finale. No noise, no bile, just a straight fight for the crown. And if the gloves stay on off-track, that only leaves one place to take them off.
