McLaren cleared the air last week at Woking after Lando Norris binned both himself and Oscar Piastri with a desperate lunge in the Singapore sprint, wiping points off the constructors' tally and violating team racing code. Norris owned it, promising to "make better decisions" and representing the team properly. The crash capped a brutal triple-header where Red Bull's upgrade package simply out-developed McLaren's MCL40, handing Max Verstappen back-to-back wins in Malaysia and Singapore while Ferrari and Mercedes also closed in. McLaren's own upgrades worked as intended — they were just outgunned. The team arrives in Austin with modest front-end and braking tweaks, banking on COTA's layout suiting the car better than the high-downforce street circuits that exposed them. Chief designer Rob Marshall says they're "getting stronger again." The championship fight needs it.
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