McLaren boss Zak Brown is adamant there are no silver bullets that explain his team’s pace but welcomes rivals spending time looking.

An array of theories attempting to explain McLaren’s pace have been put forward over the past year, from mini-DRS, flexible wings, water in tyres, and a phase changing brake cooling solution.

No ‘silver bullets’ in McLaren car pace says Zak Brown

McLaren has been the standout improver over the past two seasons, beginning at the 2023 Austrian Grand Prix.

Following a sluggish start to that campaign, an upgrade package introduced at the Red Bull Ring netted immediate dividends.

Ever since, McLaren has been on a strong development trajectory that has seen a string of successful upgrades bolted on to the car.

That translated into Constructors’ Championship success last season, the first for the team since 1998.

Things have continued this year with the McLaren MCL39 proving the car to beat out of the gates, claiming five wins across the opening seven weekends.

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But with success comes greater attention, and McLaren has become the subject of intense scrutiny from bewildered rivals seeking to primarily understand – and replicate – its ability to manage its tyres over a race stint.

Red Bull has taken particular interest, training thermal imaging cameras on the McLarens as Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri pit.

Norris’ car was selected at random by the FIA following the Miami Grand Prix, a standard procedure carried out by the governing body in the wake of all events.

The deeper analysis of the car’s legality revealed no issues – though in reality there were no concerns and the checks were simply a matter of formality and procedure.

McLaren has been resolute on its position in the face of a barrage of questions about its car.

“It doesn’t phase us,” Brown told PlanetF1.com in an exclusive interview.

“They can keep looking; there’s nothing to find other than the men and women and McLaren developed a really good race car. They’ve done a great job.

“There’s no silver bullet somewhere in the race car, but if teams think there are, and that where they want to spend their timing looking for it, hey, the more time they want to spend trying to find something that’s not there versus developing their own car, quite frankly, is a good use of their time as far as we’re concerned!

“It’s great people want to spend their time trying to find a ghost,” he added.

“We’ve always found it better to focus on your own team.”

McLaren has become a consistent performer across the different styles of circuits in recent seasons.

Where once it was particularly strong in high-speed content and weak in low-speed, those opposing peaks have been flattened to an extent.

That has translated into front-running pace around Suzuka and Miami, venues with vastly different requirements – McLaren dominated at the latter venue, claiming a comprehensive one-two result.

But only two weeks later, it slipped behind Max Verstappen in Imola.

It was a performance that coincided with a spate of Technical Directives that clarified sections of the regulations – some pointedly so.

However, there is no evidence to suggest they played any role in the outcome of the Emilia Romagna GP.

“The way we see it is the competition sped up, and that’s great,” Brown observed.

“It’s a competition. Hats off to Max, he drove a brilliant race; our gap to Merc and Ferrari and others didn’t really change.”

While McLaren has proved the team to beat in F1 2025, it has stressed that any advantage is slim.

That was demonstrated in Japan where Verstappen usurped both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to steal pole position in qualifying, and converted it to an unlikely victory in the race itself.

In Imola, Verstappen was again unassailable once he reached the front with Norris second to the flag and Piastri third.

“We always said you’ve got some track specifics,” Brown said.

“Miami really suited us, Imola less so. I think you went into Imola, we had a nice gap to Mercedes and Ferrari, but you’ve got to say Red Bull did a good job.

“I was just surprised that management didn’t recognise or congratulate their own team on a successful upgrade, and instead chose to say we’ve slowed down for a variety of reasons, all of which are totally inaccurate.”

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