Aside from Max Verstappen lurking in third place, Martin Brundle believes McLaren face two additional challenges to their F1 2025 title domination.

One being the fight from within, and the other, Mercedes’ “exciting” Emilia Romagna Grand Prix upgrades.

A Mercedes Grand Prix win at Imola?

Six races into the F1 2025 championship, McLaren are dominating both title races as they have a 95-point lead over Mercedes in the Constructors’ title and sit 1-2 in the Drivers’ standings.

Winning four of six Grands Prix, and on the podium in both Sprint events, Oscar Piastri leads the standings by 16 points over his team-mate Lando Norris, with Verstappen a further 16 off the pace.

Just behind him sits George Russell, six points down with four podium finishes in six Grands Prix.

F1 2025: The season’s winners and losers

👉 The results of the F1 2025 championship

👉 The updated Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship standings

Displaying impressive consistency this season, 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve believes Russell could launch an “under-the-radar” attack on the titles.

He explained to Sky F1: “They’ve got more points than actually we know. We look at the screen, ‘oh wow, they got a lot of points’. Even as a team, they’re always up there, they’re always competitive. He [Russell] has done really well.”

The Brackley squad are set to bolster their chances of success with an upgrade for the W16 that will be introduced at the next race, Imola.

The first event in a run of nine European races, with Canada also in the mix, most of the teams are planning to bring updates to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix as the season’s development war hits high gear.

“There is some that will be more obvious to the outside world in the next handful of races and with a bit of luck they will improve our fortunes,” Mercedes’ technical director James Allison said on the team’s post-Miami debrief.

“Hopefully the ones that happen in the next two or three races will move the dial a bit for us. Also, we will continue to try to work on the tyre temperature in the races, that will also improve our fortune.”

According to Brundle, Mercedes are “quite excited” about their Imola package.

Declaring that it is “much too early” to give McLaren the titles with “so many points available”, the former F1 driver turned pundit told Sky’s The F1 Show: “We’ve got 18 races and four Sprints yet.

“The Sprint points are going to be much more important this year than they have been in the past in terms of the championship. They’re going to be crucial to keep getting those in, especially with no point for fastest lap, which I still don’t understand why they took that away, it’s nonsense.

“But the problem McLaren can have is if Verstappen and George Russell keep pumping in the results, and Mercedes have got an update coming in Imola [that] they’re quite excited about, but I’m sure they’ll all improve to an extent.”

He warned McLaren against focusing solely on their own intra-team battle between Piastri and Lando Norris, as while they have the 1-2, too much attention could see a rival team nip ahead as Alain Prost did in 1986 against the dominant Williams pairing of Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet.

“If they’re there,” he continued referring to the McLaren team-mates, “there’s no doubt in my mind that Piastri and Norris will take points off each other. So they’ve got to be careful that they’re so focused on each other, somebody else comes in and wins the championship as Alan Prost did in 1986.

“But the problem you’ve got then is, if you wait until somebody is mathematically out of the World Championship, that’s going to be October, November time, isn’t it, in this championship?

“So McLaren might have to take a decision before that to make it, to make a choice. It depends how it unfolds. But they won’t be thinking about that until the summer break, at least.”

Russell, however, believes this year’s title fight is a McLaren affair such is their dominance especially when the track temperature rises.

“I’d love to say so, but I don’t think we are, to be honest,” he said in Bahrain when asked if he was a title contender. “McLaren are just too dominant right now. I think this is probably going to be their peak performance – what we saw this week in Bahrain.

“And what we saw in China and Suzuka is probably their worst-case scenario and they still obviously got one victory from those two races.

“So we’ve got to keep on picking up the points, picking up the pieces.

“And this weekend we picked up the pieces to get a P2 – and we did it in Melbourne as well to get the P3.

“I don’t expect this to continue for many races to come, but who knows.”

Read next: Fred Vasseur ‘going to feel the heat’ with Ferrari ‘left behind’