Red Bull's Max Verstappen narrowed the gap in the drivers' championship by winning the sprint and main races at the United States Grand Prix.
Lando Norris finished second on Sunday to cut Oscar Piastri's championship lead to 14 points with five races remaining.
Four-time world champion Verstappen is now only 40 points behind Piastri going into this weekend's Mexico City Grand Prix.
BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.
Do McLaren have to face the truth of F1 now - that if you want to win, you can't always play fair? How do they take a cannier approach to prevent Max Verstappen swooping in and stealing the championship from under their nose? - Sam
McLaren are well aware of the challenge they face with Max Verstappen and Red Bull in the drivers' championship this year, but they see no reason to change their approach to running the team.
They will continue to give both drivers the best chance they can and operate the team on a basis of fairness and equanimity.
As team principal Andrea Stella put it in Austin: "This is the way we intend racing. This is the way in which we approach racing, and we want to remain fair, and we want to apply equality to both drivers."
Stella is a veteran of many title battles. He won the championship as engineer to Kimi Raikkonen in 2007 when the Ferrari driver made up 17 points under the old scoring system in two races to win the title, while McLaren imploded.
And he lost the title as engineer to Fernando Alonso in 2010, when Ferrari messed up their strategy at the final race of the season and allowed Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull to sneak the championship from under their noses.
Stella said after the race in Austin: "We look at the next five races as opportunities to increase the gap on Max. And when it comes to having to make a call as to a driver, this will only be led by mathematics.
"We lean on the experience. I can recall at least 2007, 2010, in which you go to the last race and it's actually the [driver in] third [place] that wins the championship. So we're not going to close the door unless this is closed by mathematics."
