As Helmut Marko looks ahead to the F1 2025 campaign to come, he sees McLaren as the “clear” favourites, and that rings true “everywhere” right now.

While Red Bull do not find their current perceived position to McLaren “alarming”, Marko did highlight a deficit of up to three-tenths facing Red Bull, while the testing data flagged up a “significant” McLaren advantage when it came to tyre management.

Marko: ‘McLaren the favourite everywhere with this car’

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

With the three days of testing in Bahrain complete, we are fast approaching the F1 2025 season-opening Australian Grand Prix, where the true pecking order will be revealed as McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes all head into the new campaign with title ambitions.

Marko can foresee a scenario where all four of these teams are in the hunt, but looking ahead to Melbourne, he sees one team standing out from the pack at this early stage.

Speaking with Sport.de, Marko began: “In my opinion, it will be a three-way or four-way battle between McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari and us.

“Although, if you look at the test results, McLaren already has a head start. That was the case in both the short and long runs.

“The current favourite is clearly McLaren.”

Day 2 of 3 in Bahrain took place in conditions far from representative, with cool temperatures and rain hitting the circuit.

But, in the relative calm of Day 3, Marko saw a gap to McLaren of up to three tenths emerging in the race simulation, where an apparent key McLaren strength came to the fore.

Asked how big he believes Red Bull’s gap to McLaren is, Marko replied: “It’s hard to say exactly what that looks like, because the weather conditions were completely out of the norm. It was cold, there was strong wind. It was even raining.

“It was only the case on Wednesday, when we were on a par with McLaren. But on Friday, the last day, I would say that we were still two to three tenths behind in the long run.

“What’s more, McLaren’s tyre wear was also significantly better than our data indicated.”

Therefore, Marko declares: “McLaren is the favourite everywhere with this car.”

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Nonetheless, there is plenty of reason for optimism at Red Bull going into F1 2025, with Max Verstappen so far enjoying life at the wheel of the RB21, as he chases a fifth straight title.

That was certainly not always the case last season, Red Bull going 10 grands prix without a win at one stage as balance issues set into the RB20.

And after a major re-think for the RB21, Red Bull believe they are not yet at the point of using the full performance within.

“We reevaluated all the concepts of the car,” Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache revealed to PlanetF1.com.

“We modified most of the stuff that is maybe not as visible as the older car – the concepts overall stay the same – but plenty of stuff has changed underneath and inside the car that, in terms of cooling, suspension, aero package, everything has changed to achieve the characteristics we like.

“The overall shape of the car and bodywork, which is mainly what you will see, are similar, but not because the concept… I would say we re-evaluated, and we think it was the best compromise for what we were looking for.”

He added: “It’s clear that we had a very, very peaky car, with high potential that was difficult to extract – if we wanted to extract this, it was creating some difficulty for the driver to use it, and, especially, at slow corners, giving some instability for the driver to use it.

“What we did this year, is to maybe reduce the complete potential of the car, the peakiness, but giving a more easy way to use by the driver – that’s what our main purpose was, especially on the entry of the corner.

“It’s not as simple as that, because it’s a characteristic that the peak of downforce is not only on one dimension. It’s a multi-dimensional system that is not only downforce – it is also suspension-wise and what the kinematic is doing, but is an overall car characteristic of how the driver feels.

“But, fundamentally, it’s exactly that – reduce the overall potential in grip and capacity of the car to make it more flat.

“That’s what we are seeing at the moment.

“Last year, we had a quite difficult car and, to rebalance it, it would put you in a corner in terms of what you could do [setup-wise].

“Now it is giving us a wider range of setups that we have to explore. And it will take time to see what the best compromise is, and the compromise could be quite different from track to track, because it gives us a lot more freedom.”

Wache confirmed that the RB21 is “roughly” three to four tenths per lap quicker than the RB20 which signed-off in Abu Dhabi.

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