McLaren entered the 2025 season knowing that they either needed to stick or twist when it came to the design of this year’s car.
Andrea Stella would have been very wary of falling into the same traps that cost Red Bull the constructors’ championship last season.
Red Bull won all but one race in 2023, but last year’s car had several key design differences.
And while Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez looked very quick in the first third of 2024, it wasn’t long before McLaren, Ferrari and occasionally Mercedes were faster than them depending on the circuit.
McLaren delivered their first and most important update package to Lando Norris’ car at the Miami Grand Prix and the Brit immediately took advantage, winning the first race of his F1 career.
Oscar Piastri followed suit in Hungary and both drivers performed well enough to secure McLaren’s first team title since 1998.
Stella was cautious with McLaren’s updates last year, but when they showed off their 2025 car for the first time at Silverstone last week, it was clear that they had taken several progressive steps to retain their advantage.
Speaking on The Race F1 Podcast, former designer and pundit Gary Anderson took a closer look at the MCL39.
He noticed one quirk of the Woking-based team’s new machine that he believes McLaren would have done very little testing on to see whether or not it actually benefits the car.
Gary Anderson gives his verdict on McLaren’s 2025 Formula 1 car
Anderson was reflecting on what he’d seen at McLaren’s brief outing at Silverstone and photos of the car and said: “So part of it may be aerodynamic and trying to keep the same amount of anti-dive as they had on the car last year because they say they’ve lowered the rear leg of the front wishbone, which does away with some of the anti-dive and then increased it again by lowering the top leg of the top wishbone.
“So, it’s a bold move because I don’t think you can really do a great deal of simulation on it.
“You can obviously look at all the loads and the practicalities of how much the car would move.
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“But I don’t think you’ll really get the response out of it until the driver drives it on the track.
“So it’s a bold move and they’ve got to be pretty confident if they’ve got availability to step backwards or they’re pretty happy that they are able to simulate some of that now, which I don’t know how you go about that because I say it’s a huge amount of its driver feel.”
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Verstappen is unlikely to start the 2025 season with the same advantage that he had last year.
It means that both McLaren drivers – as well as both Ferrari drivers and maybe even George Russell at Mercedes – will fancy their chances going into next year.
Nico Rosberg thinks Norris as McLaren’s most experienced driver is the favourite for 2025, but it’s not something that the Brit necessarily agrees with.
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Norris has admitted that he’s not thought about winning the championship yet, but if testing goes well and he produces a strong performance at the second opener in Australia, that could quickly change.
There will be plenty of drivers who will have the 25-year-old in their sights should he take an early lead in the championship.
It’ll be interesting to see how he deals with that pressure and expectation as McLaren hope to find their latest champion since Mika Hakkinen.
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