Max Verstappen didn't just win a wet qualifying session — he exposed the same weakness that cost McLaren their 2007 championship.
Spa 2007, qualifying. Lewis Hamilton had dominated all season, but the rain came and Kimi Räikkönen — who'd been nowhere in the dry — was suddenly half a second clear. McLaren's engineers couldn't explain it then. Seventeen years later, with Lando Norris half a second behind Max Verstappen in identical conditions, they still can't.
This wasn't a close session. Verstappen took pole by eight-tenths over Norris's P5 qualifying result — but the gap that matters is Sector 2, where Verstappen found 0.69 seconds through Les Combes, Malmedy, and Pouhon. That's the section where the driver can't hide: high-speed corners, full commitment, rain pooling in the compression zones. The McLaren was within two-hundredths in Sector 1 and a tenth in Sector 3. But through the middle of the lap, where the circuit asks the most questions, the Red Bull had an answer McLaren didn't.
The 2007 parallel isn't decorative. That season, McLaren had the faster car in the dry — just as they arguably do now — but every time the rain came, Ferrari closed the gap or reversed it entirely. China 2007: Hamilton's ten-second lead evaporated when the track went damp. Fuji 2007: Räikkönen won by 8.3 seconds in the wet after struggling all weekend in the dry. By the time the season ended, Räikkönen had the championship and McLaren were left trying to explain how they'd lost with the quicker package.
What made 2007 painful wasn't that Ferrari had a better wet-weather car — it was that McLaren never figured out why. The engineering debrief after China pointed to tyre warm-up, driver confidence, rear stability under braking. All true, none of it actionable. The problem kept recurring because it wasn't one problem — it was a car philosophy that worked brilliantly in stable conditions and fell apart the moment the variables multiplied.
Look at the degradation data from today. Norris's intermediate tyres were losing 0.425 seconds per lap across his 24-lap session. Verstappen's were improving — minus 0.675 seconds per lap, meaning he was getting faster as the session went on. That's not tyre management. That's a car that's putting energy into the rubber correctly, keeping the contact patch alive, generating the heat it needs without overshooting. The McLaren is doing the opposite: working the tyre hard to find grip, overheating the surface, then losing performance as the session progresses.
Three red flags interrupted the session. Rain started, stopped, started again. Every restart was a reset — new conditions, new tyre temperatures, new grip levels. That's where championship-calibre teams separate themselves: not in the perfect lap, but in the ability to adapt when the script changes five times in 45 minutes. Verstappen posted his fastest lap on Lap 17, after two red flags and two intermediates stints. Norris posted his on Lap 22, by which point the track was drying and the window had already closed.
The 2007 precedent matters because it's not just about one wet qualifying session. McLaren lost that championship across six races where conditions were marginal — not because they made strategic errors, but because the car's performance window was narrower than Ferrari's. When the grip was there, they were untouchable. When it wasn't, they were guessing.
The Belgian Grand Prix is next — the race, not another qualifying session — and the forecast is dry. That's good news for McLaren, who will almost certainly have the faster car on Sunday if the conditions hold. But Zandvoort is the race after that, Round 15, and the Dutch coast in late August is a coin flip. If it rains, we'll see this script again.
The question McLaren needs to answer before they get there is the same one they couldn't answer in 2007: why does the car lose confidence when the conditions change? Not the surface-level explanation — tyre warm-up, driver preference — but the fundamental design trade-off that makes the McLaren fast in the dry and nervous in the wet. Because history suggests that if you can't answer that question, you don't win championships. You win races, you lead the development race, you have the faster package on paper. And then it rains, and someone else takes the trophy home.