The 2025 Formula 1 season is just around the corner and after three days of pre-season testing in Bahrain, a provisional pecking order has been established.
After winning the constructors’ championship last year for the first time since 1998, McLaren entered this season full of confidence.
In Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, McLaren have not only maintained a stable driver pairing but have two race winners they can rely on this year.
Norris has suggested he’s not thinking about the drivers’ championship, but it won’t be long until he starts dreaming about ending Max Verstappen’s stranglehold on the top of the standings if McLaren continue their impressive form.
Over the past 18 months, no team has made more progress than McLaren, improving with every update package they deliver.
Team principal Andrea Stella has been cautious about McLaren’s upgrades but that’s paid off in the long run as they’ve watched many of their rivals struggle after chasing too much downforce, making their cars much more difficult to drive.
A combination of balance and speed has been the key to this current set of regulations and McLaren appear to have nailed that combination.
However, 2025 is a new season and each team has had months to prepare their new cars and study what their opponents are doing to learn more about how to find those crucial extra tenths.
McLaren have taken a bold approach with their design in the hope that it’ll give them an additional advantage, something that at this very early stages appears to have paid off.
What ‘everybody in the paddock’ is saying about McLaren’s 2025 F1 car
Journalist Edd Straw was discussing on The Race F1 Podcast whether McLaren were the favourites going into 2025 based on their long-run pace in testing and said: “Yeah, I’d totally agree with that, massively so on the long run pace.
“Qualifying pace, I’m interested to see simply because there is that rear instability.
“You could see it today. At times you could see it very clearly in the esses. But again, they seem to be hanging on to it OK.
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“But I don’t know about you but everybody in the paddock I’ve spoken to in every team, there’s never been any dispute about McLaren being on top.
“They’re like, ‘Yeah, McLaren are away, McLaren are away.’ So it seems incredibly conclusive, doesn’t it, from that perspective?”
Red Bull having internal discussions about McLaren’s 2025 F1 car
Last season, Verstappen was under pressure from Norris to win his fourth consecutive drivers’ title and while the Brit performed well, he never got close enough to the 27-year-old to worry him too much.
However, the Dutchman built up much of his advantage before McLaren’s update package was installed in Miami and from that point onwards, Verstappen only outscored Norris by three points.
Not only that, but Charles Leclerc at Ferrari matched the two drivers who finished above him in the championship from the halfway point onwards, suggesting that a few teams could have title contenders within their ranks in 2025.
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Red Bull are internally worried about McLaren’s car, believing that there could be a serious pace difference between the RB21 and MCL39 at the Australian Grand Prix.
Although the first four or five tracks on the calendar are very different, the grid has converged to a point where it may not make a huge amount of difference if McLaren are a few tenths up the road compared to their rivals.
The rest of the paddock then have to decide whether to try and pursue McLaren with new parts, or abandon 2025 altogether and concentrate on the new regulations being introduced next year.
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