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Will Piastri and Norris lose out to Verstappen by taking points off each other?

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When it comes to Formula 1 driver line-ups, top teams are always faced with a dilemma.

Is it better to have a clear number one driver who will lead the squad’s effort, or two competitive racers who may bring out the best in each other but also occasionally compete for the same positions and therefore lose points to one another – on top of which fierce rivalries, as scarce as they may be nowadays, can be damaging to an outfit’s prospects.

It’s easy to picture this dilemma in a potential title race for 2025, as Red Bull’s Max Verstappen takes on McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

Verstappen hasn’t been matched in pace (or any major metric) by a team-mate since Daniel Ricciardo left Red Bull in 2018. Teamed up with Pierre Gasly, Alexander Albon and Sergio Perez, Verstappen has scored 2353.5 points over the past six seasons; his partners racked up only 1176 points – 33% of the team’s total.

Meanwhile, Piastri was significantly more competitive in his sophomore F1 campaign than in his maiden year, claiming two grand prix wins and recording top-eight results in all but two Sunday races, which contributed to McLaren’s 2024 constructors’ title.

In contrast, Red Bull’s Perez failed to finish any of the last 18 grands prix in the top five, the veteran’s form so miserable that he was replaced by 23-year-old Liam Lawson for 2025.

According to Piastri, what matters is a healthy working relationship between McLaren’s drivers. “It is obviously a different dynamic,” the Australian comments.

“I think Liam will do a good job. Obviously, famously we know how strong Max is but I think there’s other advantages that come with having a strong team-mate. In terms of being able to learn from one another, that is a very big help for both of us in trying to become faster.

“You obviously can’t measure the gain that each of us have had from having a strong team-mate next to each other, but I think there is a genuine lap time gain for both of us learning from each other.

“But yes, that obviously has its downsides in some situations as well. In my opinion I think it outweighs that, and naturally if you become world champion you’re going to be worthy no matter who your team-mate is.”

How many points did Verstappen and Norris actually lose to their team-mates in 2024?

Perez had no real impact on Verstappen's point-scoring during 2024 campaign

Perez had no real impact on Verstappen’s point-scoring during 2024 campaign

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

A first interesting – though not completely representative – metric is Red Bull’s top car in each grand prix (i.e. Verstappen’s in all but one) scoring 447 points, when McLaren’s scored 450 with Piastri its most productive driver in eight out of 24 rounds.

Obviously, this is not just about drivers taking points off each other but also the fact they sometimes fail to maximise their car’s potential, an area where Verstappen is known to excel. It’s also crucial to look at drivers’ direct impacts on their rivals’ tallies.

Delving deeper into the data, Piastri took 23 points off Norris over the whole season – far from enough to cover the Briton’s 63-point deficit on Verstappen, especially as the Australian also deprived the champion of 15 points.

Perez, on the other hand, lost Norris eight points, inclusive of his pitstop-induced fastest lap at Spa-Francorchamps (and he didn’t cost Verstappen any over the whole season).

How will Lawson do? His level of performance against Yuki Tsunoda at RB was encouraging, but he isn’t expected to match Verstappen’s speed and consistency. He proved he wasn’t afraid to race hard, even wheel to wheel with Perez’s Red Bull on the Mexican’s home turf, but then he was proving a point (though he wouldn’t admit it) against the driver whose seat he was vying for. With his future secure, he won’t need to be so robust against Verstappen – but can be expected to give the McLarens a hard time.

“Yes, potentially in terms of not taking points off each other that is a bit easier for Max, but you never know – Liam could come out and surprise us all,” Piastri adds. “I know how strong Liam is, I’ve raced against him for a number of years, but there are disadvantages and advantages, no matter what the situation is in that scenario.”

Five years on from the 2020 Formula 3 title race, the stakes will be much higher for both Oceanian drivers this time around.

More will be at stake than when Lawson and Piastri battled in their F3 days

More will be at stake than when Lawson and Piastri battled in their F3 days

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

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Ben Vinel

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Red Bull Racing

McLaren

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Formula 1

Can 2025 be Piastri’s year to win the F1 title?

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Somewhere near the end of Oscar Piastri’s press conference last week when McLaren launched its Formula 1 car for 2025, the Australian answered a question that nobody was asking.

The actual question was about his relationship with team-mate Lando Norris and how McLaren would handle the competitiveness between the two.

Towards the end of his answer, Piastri said: “I want to win the world championship this year and hopefully we have a car that’s capable of doing that.” It was a nothing quote as there is yet to be an F1 driver that didn’t want to win the title.

But, sensing he’d stated the obvious, he doubled down and added during the follow up question: “I do think that I can become world champion this year.” It was a confident statement, but can he?

The answer to this is absolutely yes. Piastri’s performances over the past two years have been so mature and measured that it is still mind-boggling that this will be only his third season in F1.

ANALYSIS: McLaren’s MCL39 unveil offers few details – but there’s some evident developments

During those first two campaigns, Piastri has evolved from rookie to race winner and seemingly done so without any emotion.

In a recent debate among Autosport’s writers, Piastri was identified to be one of the biggest threats to Norris’s own title expectations.

Last season, he achieved two grand prix wins and finished fourth in the championship but those victories in Hungary and Baku were contrasted by Norris clearly getting the better of him during qualifying.

Piastri will have to close the gap to Norris in qualifying to challenge for the title this year

Piastri will have to close the gap to Norris in qualifying to challenge for the title this year

Photo by: McLaren

Piastri spent time at home during the winter, which seems to have given him added impetus and the self-belief that he can fight for the title this season and, given his astronomical progress, it is not unthinkable that he can find another gear.

Those close to Piastri speak about his raw talent but also his ability to rapidly improve.

Last year, Autosport spoke to Rob McIntyre, who mentored Piastri’s early racing career when he moved to the UK and he revealed an anecdote about the F1 driver’s first test in a racing car, held at the Anglesey circuit.

INSIGHT: The talent spotters that moulded Piastri into an F1 winner

McIntyre tells a story where Piastri’s improvements lap after lap left the Arden race engineers, who were holding the test, stunned to learn that this was his first run out.

By the end of the second day, Piastri – who was told to get as close as he could to the lap time set by Jack Aitken – had surpassed the Briton’s benchmark.

So, while he admits he might not be the “finished product”, there is all the potential that if he can continue his sensational development to the point where he can close the gap to Norris in qualifying, then Piastri can more than match him for results in Sunday races and pull himself into contention for the title.

It was a bold statement but perhaps it is not as far-fetched as it might seem.

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Ben Hunt

Formula 1

Oscar Piastri

McLaren

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What McLaren’s “aggressive” approach says about its confidence to nail both 2025 and 2026

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Every year, Formula 1’s teams have to make the decision when to end focus on the current season and pour all of its engineering resources into designing the next car. It’s an important thing to time correctly, and F1 is littered with examples of teams who either kept developing too late and started the next year badly, or diverted course too early and sacrificed success in the immediate term for little pay-off.

On the cusp of a new ruleset, it’s even more important to get that timing right; the big teams can’t afford to phone it in for a year, but equally do not have the cost cap allowance nor the quantity of personnel to go all out across two projects. They’ll have to split their time effectively to fight on two fronts: the present and the future.

McLaren feels it can achieve that. Now imbued with the confidence of having won its first constructors’ championship since 1998, the team believes that it can make a full fist of defending its title – and potentially battling for the drivers’ crown to boot – while also being competitive in 2026.

Andrea Stella, the team principal under whom McLaren has completed its long journey from the wilderness to the front of the field, says that its approach to 2025 would not have differed had the 2026 not loomed on the horizon.

To augment that approach, Stella also did not want the team to become complacent. He spoke of the recently revealed MCL39, which broke cover in an orange-and-black dazzle camouflage livery, and how the team had pursued an “aggressive” approach for the successor to its championship-winning car.

“We have not changed the approach or the rate of development with a front-loading of our developments,” the Italian remarked at the launch. “We have just tried to go as fast as possible in terms of developing the car, which means that there will be some updates during the early races of the season.

Watch: Why Stella is confident as McLaren launch their F1 2025 season

“But this would have been the same even without the 2026 changes of regulations looming ahead. If we had just gone as fast as possible, because we are very aware that last season, even if it had been a successful season, the margins we had from a performance point of view mean that we needed to be aggressive with the car to try and cash in as much performance as possible.”

He expanded further, citing the rate of development of the other teams. In effect, it follows one of F1’s oldest adages: stand still, and prepare to fall backwards – and with the tight margins exhibited in modern F1, this might equate to six or seven positions in the constructors’ championship, not just one or two.

Consider F1’s average supertimes over 2024, which is the culmination of the teams’ average fastest laps expressed as a percentage of the theoretical best. Over the year, Red Bull led the way just 0.202% percent away from the 100% time, with McLaren a shade behind at 0.266%. Sauber, the overall slowest team, was 1.9% short. The gaps are shrinking, and F1 is becoming ever more competitive between all 10 teams.

“I think those margins were so small that considering the development that other teams would have had, had we not gone as fast as possible in terms of development, we might very quickly lose any advantage that we had,” Stella continued.

“And with four teams that at any single weekend were in condition to win the race, it’s very easy to fall from being pole position to being P8 on the grid, so definitely we kept full gas in terms of development, and we will see if we have been able to develop more than our competitors from the 2024 to the 2025 car.”

McLaren doesn’t quite have the luxury of being able to develop its MCL39 all the way through 2025, as aerodynamic testing and cost cap restrictions will dictate a relatively early switchover to 2026 for most. It’ll be a gradual process of moving people over from one project to another, although the point at which the team is fully committed to next year’s all-new formula must be timely.

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

And McLaren has its own example to consider, as it – under no spending restrictions – was locked into a fierce title scrap with Ferrari over the 2008 titles. Both outfits kept developing until the last moment, a decision that arguably hurt the teams considerably when it came to 2009.

Versus the Brawns and Red Bulls, which had the luxury of time over 2008 to build up their concepts, the Ferrari and McLaren interpretations of those rules were severely underbaked at the start of the year. Sure, both turned into race winners by the end with continued development, but they were pretty much immediately out of the reckoning for either title.

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That being said, there’s BMW’s cautionary tale of switching over too soon – some suspect Robert Kubica might have been in title contention in 2008 had the German auto giant not played it too safe, a decision that ultimately yielded the pallid F1.09 chassis.

McLaren should be lauded for being aggressive with its 2025 goals – but it must not take its eye off the ball for the long term. But, per Stella, the team believes that it can achieve its targets either side of the new regulatory overhaul.

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Jake Boxall-Legge

Formula 1

McLaren

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McLaren’s principles won’t change as Norris and Piastri start from zero

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McLaren’s Andrea Stella says the team won’t change its principles and racing rules this year as its drivers Norris and Piastri both aim to start the 2025 Formula 1 season on the front foot.

After several years in which McLaren missed the mark at the start of the season, the papaya squad is now aiming to hit the ground running and continue the kind of title-winning form that yielded its first constructors’ title since 1998.

Its poor start, before a spectacular turnaround from Miami onwards, seriously hindered Norris’ outside chance of realistically beating Max Verstappen to the title, with McLaren opting to rule out team orders until September’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Now Piastri is adamant he has learned enough from an inconsistent 2024 campaign to be a stronger all-round performer in both qualifying and the race, so both he and Norris can fight for the championship as long as McLaren delivers the goods.

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That will further test McLaren’s racing principles, but team principal Stella is adamant nothing will change.

“The main aspect is that both drivers start the season with equal opportunities, and our fundamentals are based on the racing principles that we already used last year,” Stella said at the Silverstone launch of McLaren’s 2025 MCL39 car.

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“We reviewed last season – and I was actually quite proud of last season – we reviewed all the situations in which there was a proximity between the two drivers, and I was quite impressed by how well they behaved. We take some learning from last year, but already I think that was positive in terms of how we interacted and acted together as a team.

“When we reviewed last season – the drivers and the team, most of the time represented by myself – we always looked at ourselves, ‘I could have done this better’, rather than ‘Lando saying Oscar should have done this better’, and Oscar saying ‘Lando should have done this better’. So, I think we take some learning from last year, but already I think that was positive in terms of how we acted together as a team, and then we will start from this concept of equal opportunities and our racing principles.” 

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Stella added that drivers didn’t belong at McLaren if they didn’t buy into to those racing principles that put the team first, with any circumstantial team orders discussed and agreed in advance.

“It’s important to say that the racing principles are representative not only of what the team believes in terms of how we go racing, but also what the drivers believe, because if a driver is not fully into these principles, then that’s not the right driver for McLaren,” he cautioned.

“I really look forward to having this kind of challenge. It means that we are doing well as a team, it means that the two drivers are doing well as drivers, and it means that the car is actually competitive, and we did a good job from a technical and racing point of view.”

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Filip Cleeren

Formula 1

Lando Norris

Oscar Piastri

McLaren

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McLaren vows to stick to principles as Norris and Piastri come out swinging

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Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri gave a confident impression as they presented the 2025 McLaren Formula 1 car to the world on Thursday at a wet Silverstone.

Norris is adamant he has learned a huge amount from his first title battle, admittedly a long shot, last year and going up against now four-time world champion Max Verstappen wheel-to-wheel, having stewed over a number of confrontations in 2024 when he came off second best.

But Norris was still the driver scoring the most points on average once McLaren turned its MCL38 into a winning car in Miami, so there is little doubt that if the papaya squad can be competitive from the start, the 25-year-old will be right in the mix.

Then there is Piastri, who by his own admission was too inconsistent to keep pace with Norris in the championship, which forced him into a temporary number two role whenever the circumstances dictated it. McLaren has always been keen to stress it has two equal drivers, and sticking to its guns all the way until after September’s Italian Grand Prix earned it praise in some corners for its fairness, but equally criticism in others for not imposing team orders earlier to maximise its chances of a double championship having eventually won the constructors’ crown.

It was clear McLaren was still figuring stuff out as it went along, having not been in a title battle in its current iteration under CEO Zak Brown and team boss Andrea Stella. Its first version of the so-called ‘papaya rules’ still seemed to allow Piastri to make a risky lunge at Norris in Monza, which the 23-year-old pulled off deftly but still cost his team-mate not one but two positions.

The rules were then tidied up further in Baku, where McLaren openly said it would ask Piastri to support Norris when necessary. By that time it was arguably too late, with Piastri only able to move over for Norris in the Brazilian sprint before Verstappen struck the hammer blow in the sensational wet race that followed.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38

Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

While McLaren was still learning how to be a title contender, so was Piastri, and the Australian now believes “I can be the world champion this year”.

His two victories were punctuated by several weekends where Piastri felt he wasn’t quite at the races, which in a tight battle at the front cost him too many spots in qualifying and too much work to do on Sundays, where he has also uncovered some weaknesses. But Piastri is now adamant that he addressed many of those “opportunities” and is relishing the prospect of starting from a clean slate.

“In terms of managing myself and Lando, obviously our target is to have every weekend be an easy one-two and make sure that we then fight for that,” Piastri mused on the subject of McLaren’s rules of engagement this year.

“Of course, we’re going to be racing each other from the start. We’re all starting on zero and I want to win the world championship this year and hopefully we have a car that’s capable of doing that from the start.

“Everyone is going to have that mentality, you have to, but we are going to be able to race each other and we’ve shown time and time again that we can race each other hard but cleanly. As long as we’re not taking points off of the team then that’s how we’re going to go racing.”

Piastri is managed by Mark Webber and Ann Neal, who are sure to have played an important role navigating the young Australian through uncharted territory for him, but a familiar scenario for Webber. Webber unsuccessfully fought against the status of being a number two driver to Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull, and will now make sure to fight Piastri’s corner so history doesn’t repeat itself.

Mark Webber, Red Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull Racing

Mark Webber, Red Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

Norris acknowledged Piastri might well be his biggest threat if McLaren picks up in Australia where it left off in 2024, but says there is a joint responsibility between the drivers and the team to not let things derail.

“It’s a different year, how we start the year just changes everything and I know Oscar’s hungry for a championship,” Norris pitched in. “For sure he’s capable of winning a championship, but at the same time I’m taking one race at a time and that’s our mentality of the team. Everyone knows that we want to beat each other and you want to be the top dog in the team and that’s normal, that’s the expectation.

“But I don’t think it changes anything, I hope it doesn’t in some ways, I know probably in some ways it will because that’s competitiveness, every driver wants to go out and prove their point, but there’s also just responsibility on myself, on Oscar, Andrea, the teams around both of us as drivers to handle these situations correctly.

“In some cases that will mean slightly more rules and then tightening up on some things, because we might be closer together more often, we might race more often. But we’ve definitely set a good standard last year of how we can work together as a team, how up until Baku there was no priority over one or the other, it was pretty much: ‘You’re fighting each other, it’s up to you’.”

Naturally, having two drivers at the sharp end of the grid is a good problem to have – just ask Red Bull – but there have been few examples in the past where things didn’t get feisty, or escalated into something much worse, once that equal status was maintained as the title fight headed towards its conclusion. But Stella, the architect of McLaren’s racing rules as well as of its technical success, vows the squad will not deviate from the principles it has established last year once it became clear its car was going to be a regular winner.

When asked if things can get spiky between the pair, Stella said he was “looking forward to having this kind of challenge” but still insisted that drivers who don’t buy into the team’s ethos do not belong in a McLaren F1 car in the first place.

Watch: Why Stella is confident as McLaren launch their F1 2025 season

“The team is in the lucky position of having two drivers that can contend for victories, like they have already proven, and can contend for championships if the car will be good enough,” Stella said. “The main aspect is that both drivers start the season with equal opportunities, and our fundamentals are based on the racing principles that we already used last year.

“I was actually quite proud of last season, we reviewed all the situations in which there was a proximity between the two drivers, and I was quite impressed by how well they behaved. We take some learning from last year, but already I think that was positive in terms of how we interacted and acted together as a team.

“It’s important to say that they are representative not only of what the team believes in terms of how we go racing, but also what the drivers believe as to how we go racing, because if a driver is not fully into these principles, then that’s not the right driver for McLaren.”

Time will tell if McLaren’s rules of engagement were as robust as the team believes, or if they were merely kept intact by the performance difference and ensuing points gap between Norris and Piastri.

But if Piastri has really upped his game in 2025, then McLaren’s principles will be stress tested more than they were last year.

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Filip Cleeren

Formula 1

Lando Norris

Oscar Piastri

McLaren

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F1 2025 champion? You bet! Norris out to deliver for backers

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Being considered the pre-season favourite can sometimes add yet more weight to the heavy burden a driver puts on their own shoulders – however, Lando Norris is aiming to win the F1 title in 2025 not just for himself but also to help line the pockets of those who back him to do so.

As the McLaren MCL39 broke cover at a cold and grey Silverstone on Thursday afternoon, the forecast for the upcoming season is much brighter for Norris.

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The 25-year-old is predicted by many to be the man who finally overthrows Max Verstappen, with several bookmakers declaring the Brit as the most likely champion in 2025.

Far from being crushed under the weight of expectation, Norris wants to go one better than last season, when he ultimately came up short in his quest to claim a first world championship and wrestle the crown away from Verstappen.

Asked if being the favourite ramped up the pressure, Norris replied: “No, I mean I hope they make a lot of money on me!

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“I feel bad if I let them down if they put money on me, so that’s definitely not something that will ever sway me in terms of my pressure, that people are doing that kind of thing.

“I know because of last year, that’s just how things have gone, because as well last year, those were the expectations, the expectations for the team and for myself.

“I’m definitely not feeling the pressure of all of these things, I know there’s the expectation and we have more partners and sponsors and all of these things and fans, every single one of these things adds to the pressure and the nerves of it all.

“I like seeing those things, I like hearing them, I like that I have that kind of bit of pressure on my back, but at the same time I just hope I can go out and make some money.”

Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, in the garage

Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, in the garage

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

One bookmaker that considers Norris the hot favourite is Betfair, who has the McLaren man at +225 (9/4) to take the title this season.

“The 2024 F1 season was the most unpredictable in recent times and more of the same is expected in 2025, with drivers from three different teams topping the list of favourites for the upcoming season,” said Betfair spokesperson Sam Rosbottom.

“Having pushed Max Verstappen close in 2024, Lando Norris is the favourite to win the title. Verstappen’s Red Bull team are predicted to drop in performance this season, with Ferrari and Red Bull joint-favourites to top the constructors’ standings.

“Norris and his team-mate Oscar Piastri both won multiple races last year, but the Brit is clearly ahead of his McLaren colleague in the market. This could indicate the British team’s intention to prioritise Norris as team leader once again in 2025.

“All eyes will be on Lewis Hamilton as he joins Ferrari, but he is set for a tough battle against established team-mate Charles Leclerc, which the latter is favourite to edge.

“Despite a strong end to 2024, George Russell’s heads into his first season as Mercedes team leader as sixth favourite for the Championship.”

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Lando Norris

McLaren

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I can become the F1 world champion this year

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McLaren’s Oscar Piastri is adamant he is now ready to fight for the world championship as he enters his third season in Formula 1.

Piastri has impressed from the moment he first climbed into a papaya-clad machine at the 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix, and as McLaren turned around its fortunes the Australian too turned from a highly-rated prospect into an established frontrunner, coolly collecting his first two grand prix wins last year and finishing fourth in the championship.

But the 23-year-old’s rise hasn’t always been plain sailing or linear, as his breakout victories in Hungary and Baku were also followed by weekends where he found it harder to extract the maximum out of himself and the MCL38 on every single weekend, and saw team-mate Lando Norris get the upper hand on him in qualifying, more so than during his debut season.

Having seen team-mate Norris make a late lunge at Max Verstappen to try and keep the Dutchman from a fourth straight world title, Piastri feels he is now capable of operating on the same level and mount a title bid of his own even if he admits he is still not the “finished product”.

“I do think that I can become world champion this year,” he insisted as McLaren launched its 2025 car on Thursday. “I feel like 12 months ago I was going into the season still with some weaknesses that I wasn’t particularly confident with. Through last season I addressed them and it’s now just about addressing them every weekend.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38

Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“I’m confident and I think we’ve still got some things to work on. I’m definitely not the finished product but I don’t think anyone necessarily is. If we can work on some of the things that we’ve set out to do in this off-season, then I’ll have a lot of tools to be able to try and make that happen.”

His qualifying deficit to Norris was one area Piastri pinpointed towards the end of last season as an area for improvement, but having now spent more time in McLaren’s simulator, he has identified more opportunities to be a more consistent contender and start more grand prix weekends on the front foot, which has further bolstered his confidence in his 2025 chances.

“There were definitely a couple of weekends where I wasn’t as strong as I wanted to be,” he admitted. “I think it’s building up the resilience to be able to adapt a bit quicker in the weekends. We’ve gone into a lot of detail on how we can be better prepared for this season and some of the more specific driving opportunities.

“I said at the end of last season qualifying is something I wanted to work on, but I think going through a lot of the details and things, it’s not just qualifying better. There are some specifics that if I can improve on those, it’ll make everything better. Then you get the confidence and everything naturally helps itself. There are definitely some opportunities we’ve identified and if I can work on those, then hopefully those weekends at some point from last season will disappear.

“Ultimately what’s going to be important this season is putting your best foot forward every weekend, because there are going to be weekends where you’re not the quickest. It’s how you can still make the most of those weekends where you’re not on top.”

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Filip Cleeren

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Oscar Piastri

McLaren

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McLaren flexes its muscles to kick off F1 launch season

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It was a rare thing these days. A team hosting an in-person car launch, rather than pressing ‘send’ on an email containing some made-up quotes from its drivers and rendered images of its F1 car.

It was even rarer that it was the reigning world champion squad that would be first to throw the covers off its new challenger for the season ahead.

Usually such honour is taken by one of the teams at the back of the grid, eager to gain some much-needed media exposure – but not this time.

The 2025 F1 season is officially underway and out in front are the defending constructors’ champion team, McLaren, that launched the MCL39 on Thursday at Silverstone in front of F1 media, not hidden away at a private test track.

Understandably, the build up to the launch event was kept off social media to prevent fans from flocking to the Hilton Hotel that sits adjacent to the Silverstone Wing complex that holds the teams’ garages, but otherwise this was your typical launch of old.

A pithy observation but, reading between the lines, McLaren is confident heading into the new campaign. And it has reason to.

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team, Zak Brown, CEO, McLaren Racing

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team, Zak Brown, CEO, McLaren Racing

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

By going first, and so prominently, this can be viewed as some flex by McLaren, more evidence of which can be given by the comments from its team principal Andrea Stella, as Autosport asked him about his team’s preparations ahead of the new season.

The Italian, who had come into the 2023 season with a stark warning that the team would initially struggle to be competitive, was more positive going into the 2024 campaign.

But for 2025, there is an even greater shift in optimism. Promising an “innovative” approach to the design philosophy despite being one that was a “relatively challenging approach”, Stella is noticeably upbeat with his expectations.

“What I can say in terms of entering the 2025 season, is that I’m pleased that we could keep the rate of development that we have had over the last two years,” Stella said.

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“The 2025 car on the paper should be a decent step forward. But if I look from far enough, I think this step forward is actually on a linear trend to some of the other upgrades or developments that we took in 2023. And then in 2024.

“This 2025 car, at least for what we see in our numbers, should be just along this line, which is good news itself. It means we have not run out of steam.”

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL39

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL39

Photo by: McLaren

Stella has rightly received the plaudits for McLaren’s incredible trajectory over the past two seasons. However, there has also been painful lessons, such as the team throwing away a victory in last year’s British GP and the controversial decision to swap race-leader Lando Norris with Oscar Piastri during the Hungarian GP.

Upon reflection, McLaren should have prioritised Norris’ fight in the drivers’ championship.

The message from McLaren over the season was one of learning and Stella says the team has indeed studied its failings and also understood why it was able to win.

He added: “The most important thing, first of all, is the culture. You need to have the principles, you need to have a mindset associated to dealing with missed opportunities.

“We have done, as a team, quite a lot of work to make sure that when there’s a missed opportunity, while it can be painful in the short term or in the moment, because it means that you might have lost some points or you might have lost a possible victory, like at Silverstone.

“At the same time this becomes a great opportunity to improve, be it an individual improvement or a group improvement, or a team improvement.

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team, the McLaren team celebrate in Parc Ferme

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team, the McLaren team celebrate in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“So certainly for me as a team principal, a lot of my efforts have gone into establishing this kind of mindset, which is a positive mindset towards missed opportunities.

“You mentioned the missed opportunities, but in reality, there’s a lot to consolidate even when things go well. You do have to understand why things have gone well, rather than simply think, that’s because I’m good.

“Well, you better check exactly why things went well. So that’s an ethos, that’s a cultural element above all.”

McLaren it seems, would appear to be in good shape and the noises emanating from the team are positive. Yet despite this rare, and frankly welcome return to a traditional launch event, as always, we will not know for sure how quick McLaren is until qualifying for the opener in Melbourne next month.

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In this article

Ben Hunt

Formula 1

McLaren

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Formula 1

McLaren made ‘aggressive and fundamental’ changes to its title-winning F1 car

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Heading into the final year of this set of regulations with the best car of the field, it would have been understandable for McLaren to optimise its winning concept from 2024, the MCL38 that delivered the papaya squad its first world championship since 1998.

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Since 1 January teams have been allowed to fully develop their 2026 cars, which will be a challenging clean-slate design, which might invite some teams not to overspend resources on their cars for this season.

But not McLaren, team boss Andrea Stella says as the team first unveiled its 2025 car on a rainy filming day at Silverstone, sporting a temporary camo livery ahead of F1’s big season launch in London next week.

The MCL39 appears substantially different from the sidepod onwards, and that is no coincidence as Stella says the team has made drastic changes to its winning formula to stay ahead of the game.

“What we tried to achieve with this new car is innovative. It’s a car in which we tried to raise the bar in many areas, including the fundamental layout,” Stella promised at the launch event in its Woking headquarters.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL39

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL39

Photo by: McLaren

“It’s something that definitely we evaluated carefully because the MCL38 was already a competitive car, so we needed to be conscious, considerate as to how much we wanted to innovate. But ultimately, we actually went for a relatively challenging approach in terms of how much innovation is in this car. This is predominantly to gain aerodynamic efficiency. At the same time, we still wanted to make some improvements in terms of interaction with the tyres, and what you can do to improve long-run pace.”

“Pretty much every fundamental component of the layout has been subject to some innovation in order to gain, sometimes not only by marginal gains, some technical opportunities for development. Everything has been subject to optimisation, sometimes incrementally, sometimes actually quite substantially.”

Stella explained that McLaren simply could not play it safe because of how tight 2024 has been, with McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari all closely matched over the balance of the entire season, and – along with Mercedes – all trading dominant weekends. Add to this the fact that the current set of regulations is heading into its fourth year, and teams at the front of the grid have been forced to turn their cars upside down just to find those extra marginal gains.

“We have not changed the approach or the rate of development with a front-loading of our developments,” said Stella, who added that McLaren’s launch car is roughly what we’ll be seeing at the Bahrain pre-season test at the end of the month.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL39

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL39

Photo by: McLaren

“We have just tried to go as fast as possible in terms of developing the car, which means that there will be some updates during the early races of the season, but this would have been the same even without the 2026 changes of regulations looming ahead.

“We are very aware that last season, even if it had been a successful season, the margins we had mean that we had to be aggressive with the car to try and cash in as much performance as possible. Those margins were so small that considering the development that other teams would have had, had we not gone as fast as possible in terms of development, we might very quickly lose any advantage that we had.

“With four teams that at any single weekend were in condition to win the race, it’s very easy to fall from being pole position to being P8 on the grid, so definitely we kept full gas in terms of development, and we will see if we have been able to develop more than our competitors from the 2024 to the 2025 car.”

In this article

Filip Cleeren

Formula 1

McLaren

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