McLaren fans think Lando Norris must be ‘joking’ after seeing his ‘terrible’ potential race suit for the 2025 F1 season

Constructors’ champions McLaren are the first team to unveil and run their 2025 car for the upcoming season.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri conducted a filming day at Silverstone in the MCL39 ahead of pre-season testing in Bahrain later this month. The duo completed laps in the 2025 machine – with the regulations for filming days permitting 200km of mileage (or 33 laps of the British GP circuit).

McLaren ran a special one-off cameo livery for the test. The Woking-based outfit will unveil the MCL39’s actual 2025 design at the F175 event at the O2 Arena in London on February 18 – along with the other nine F1 teams.

Norris and Piastri will be gunning for the drivers’ title in 2025. The pair helped McLaren win the Constructors’ Championship for the first time in 26 years last season, beating Ferrari by 14 points.

Norris finished runner-up in 2024 to Max Verstappen after a late charge for the title. The Brit came up short by 63 points and he heads into 2025 with arguably the strongest package on the grid.

This season, McLaren have teased that the 25-year-old will fight for the title in a new race suit. But fans are not keen on the new look.

McLaren fans slam ‘terrible’ potential new race suit for Lando Norris in 2025

Posting the new design on X (formerly Twitter) with the caption ‘Stealth mode: activated’, McLaren shared Norris wearing a black and grey suit as opposed to papaya. The suit also features Norris ‘LN4’ and his race number down on the waist.

The suit features no sponsors – although it would be assumed they will be added on when the season kicks off. It is not currently known where this design is McLaren’s 2025 race suit, but fans took to social media to vent their disgust.

One fan was left thinking Norris was playing a practical joke as they wrote: “Please tell me you’re joking”, while another was confused by the design: “Is that the suit for this year?!”

One user said: “Looks like cheap motobike leathers, sorry not a fan”, while another was in agreement as they wrote: “Not the best looking one”.

Another fan hopes to see more colour on the design: “Please tell me the livery actually has some colour and isn’t just black with 1 or 2 orange stripes”, they wrote.

Finally, one fan felt the design would not please the eye with McLaren’s sponsors on it: “That’s gonna look terrible once the sponsors logos are on it”.

Could McLaren’s team orders damage their title challenge in 2025?

One of the key talking points from McLaren’s 2024 season with their controversial ‘papaya rules’. In theory, this was the Woking-based outfit’s way of intervening with their drivers to aid Norris in his title fight – which was ultimately unsuccessful.

Piastri had to take a step back to help his teammate, but with the scores now set to zero, the Aussie is looking to challenge Norris. Piastri wants to avoid team orders in 2025, but it seems his team have other ideas.

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McLaren will keep their papaya rules policy in 2025 which could be damaging considering it did not work in 2024. The team were too late to intervene and some poor strategy calls through the year ultimately cost them.

However, McLaren will have learned a lot from fighting Verstappen for a championship last year and may be better prepared to challenge in 2025.

But Piastri could beat Norris if the Aussie manages to swing the advantage his way. It would be assumed – initially at least – that the McLaren duo will be allowed to fight each other and the result will be telling for papaya rules this season.