Mercedes’ James Allison has revealed just how much quicker McLaren’s MCL39 is suspected to be ahead of its competition.

With two wins from the first three races, McLaren’s MCL39 appears to be the class of the field – but just how much quicker than its rivals is it really?

James Allison: McLaren three-tenths clear of Mercedes

McLaren leads the Constructors’ Championship after the first three rounds of the 2025 season, 36 points clear of Mercedes and a further 14 points clear of Red Bull – the only team aside from McLaren to have won a Grand Prix.

What is clear after the first three races is that McLaren’s car is the machine to beat at this point of the season, but what’s not clear is just how great its pace advantage over the rest of the field really is.

This question was put to Mercedes’ technical director James Allison ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix, with the British engineer saying he suspects the gap back from McLaren to Mercedes and Red Bull is not inconsequential.

F1 2025: The season’s winners and losers

👉 The results of the F1 2025 championship
👉 The updated Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship standings

“We come back from every race weekend having plotted where we think we sit; we’re just looking at sector times in quali and in the race, and the gaps in quali are very steady,” he told media, including PlanetF1.com.

“We’ve been to three tracks now, and the gap has been pretty much three-tenths to McLaren. Two, if we’re feeling optimistic, much less to a Red Bull – sometimes us in front, sometimes a whisker behind, and generally us having the legs on the Ferrari.

“In the race, the gap has been reasonably small; say, at the last track, we were only 10 or 12 seconds behind wat the end of the race, but, in Melbourne, [the gap was] much larger, and that is much more about whether the tyres are happily in the window or not.

“Because, over a single lap on new rubber, you can get most of what you need to from them but if you haven’t got them happy over a longer run, then it will tell – you can see the gap opening up to half a second, three-quarters of a second.

“This track will be a real test of that because of its very degrading nature.”

Given that this is the fourth year of stable chassis and aerodynamic regulations, such a gap at such a late stage is “quite a lot”.

“I think it’s been more like two-tenths in one or two places, but three-tenths is… You can normally easily win championships with a two-tenths lead,” he said.

“However, we don’t just fight the people who are winning the race. We fight those nearest to us, and the gaps are way smaller than that there.

“We have to make sure that we can continue to put points over the Ferrari to make sure that we can beat Max in the Red Bull and, hopefully, get closer to the McLarens, who’ve done a fine job with their car this year.”

The suspicion has been that McLaren’s true pace advantage comes from the MCL39’s ability to be very kind on its tyres, with hot conditions – like in Bahrain – playing further to the strengths of the car as opposed to the cooler conditions seen in Japan.

Addressing the theory of McLaren’s pace superiority, Allison said tyre life is the obvious place to start.

“No one knows that. If we did, it’d be very easy to copy, wouldn’t it?” he said when asked for his thoughts.

“I think you could take a reasonable stab at saying that their surface temperatures at the rear of the car are likely to be lower than the other teams because their advantage is found most when you’re at a rear-limited track and where rear tyre temperatures are governing your pace.

“But it’s never one thing, and they would have done a good job across the board.”

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