I don’t think they were holding back as much really. With everyone being forced to do max 18 laps, a big Red Bull advantage of being good to their tyres got taken out of the equation. I think you can argue this is also partially why Piastri could finish ahead of Norris. That and team orders, but McLaren would have let Norris true if he was so much faster to challenge Max I think. (All speculation but that’s the fun of talking about it, no?)