Thermal images and McLaren’s brakes: How big is Red Bull’s challenge in F1 2025?

The pattern after the first six Formula 1 weekends of 2025 is clear: Max Verstappen can compete with McLaren over a single lap and compensate for some weaknesses himself, but on most Sundays he and Red Bull simply don’t have the tools to fight the papaya cars over a full race distance.

The explanation for the smaller gaps in qualifying is twofold. First, Verstappen extracts everything from the RB21 and can push the car a little bit more as tyre wear isn’t a limiting factor during a qualifying lap. It has earned him pole position in Suzuka, Jeddah, and most recently Miami.

The second part of the explanation lies in the McLaren car. According to team boss Andrea Stella, the MCL39 is difficult to handle over a single lap, particularly due to unpredictability on the front axle. It easily leads to lock-ups and explains why Oscar Piastri and especially Lando Norris haven’t always extracted the maximum from their car in Q3.

“I think we have enough statistics to confirm what was already our initial impression in Bahrain during the test,” said Stella. “That the car was easier to exploit in race simulation runs rather than on a single lap in qualifying. We have seen that so far we haven’t had any perfect lap, maybe the best was Oscar’s lap in Bahrain.”

These issues are less pronounced during the race, as the car isn’t pushed to the limit as much. It makes the car more predictable and highlights McLaren’s strongest asset: managing the Pirelli tyres. Stella referred to this as the “black art” in F1.

“Clearly in the race when you put consecutive laps together and you have a bit of degradation in hot conditions, then it looks like the car performs very well,” he added. “I want to go back to saying that it’s a result of some very targeted engineering work.”

Bahrain and Miami are reality checks for Red Bull

This is consistent with the data. Verstappen has been able to compete most closely with the McLaren cars in Japan and Saudi Arabia, and that’s no coincidence. In Suzuka, he could capitalise on his pole position as overtaking was nearly impossible, while the ultra-fast Jeddah Corniche Circuit has proved atypical in multiple ways.

The layout is highly specific, with a sequence of fast corners which suit the RB21, and traditionally, tyre wear is very low in Jeddah, playing into Verstappen and Red Bull’s hands. It’s therefore not entirely accurate for Christian Horner to use this race to emphasise that the performance can vary from track to track, as Jeddah has been an outlier in a way and doesn’t negate Red Bull’s structural issues.

These structural issues have been highlighted in Bahrain and Miami. Both races were held in high temperatures, with tyre wear playing a significant, if not decisive, role. In both races, the Red Bull drivers’ tyres overheated quickly, leading to significantly higher wear compared to McLaren.

Verstappen was over 30 seconds behind in Bahrain and barely finished ahead of Pierre Gasly in the Alpine. In Miami, the result was better with fourth, but the gap was almost 40s. Helmut Marko estimated the pure deficit at seven tenths to a full second per lap. The Austrian described the situation as “depressing” and added that Red Bull’s updates – a modified floor in Miami – hadn’t had the impact he expected.

Focus on McLaren’s brake drums and thermal images

Even more interesting is what Verstappen mentioned on Saturday during the Dutch media session: “If you see what McLaren does with the tyres, then we are all doing something wrong.” According to the four-time world champion, the effect can be seen on many occasions: “You saw it on intermediates in the rain as well. As soon as the tyres overheat, they have a massive advantage.”

The key question is what exactly McLaren is doing and whether this can be replicated by competitors in the current season. “We’re doing our best to solve that, but some things take a bit longer to understand. And then actually producing it is another story,” Verstappen told Motorsport.com.

The first step, as Verstappen mentions, is understanding what McLaren is doing. The focus is on the brakes, more specifically on the brake drums. It is understood that Red Bull has looked at some thermal images obtained from an outside party, which have shown interesting “blue” spots – indicating that certain parts of the McLaren brake drums are remarkably cold compared to others. It can help to prevent the heat from the brakes being transferred to the wheel rims and the tyres, and thus preventing them from overheating.

The FIA inspected the McLaren car and the brake system after the Miami Grand Prix, although it’s important to stress that this was part of the usual post-race checks. The report of a selected car usually arrives just before the next race weekend, but apparently everything was found in order and therefore legal.

It means that competitors must continue their search for McLaren’s tyre secret, though there are two complicating factors in that: the budget cap and the fact that teams must eventually shift their focus to 2026, limiting the ability to invest endlessly in this year’s car.

A topic beyond F1 2025? Knowledge partially transferrable to 2026

It’s crucial for Red Bull to at least understand this aspect, as the implications go beyond 2025 and Stella acknowledges that the current knowledge can partially be carried over into 2026.

While the cars will be completely different, the tyres will be different, and everything will be based on a new set of regulations, according to Stella, the basic principles can still be applied.

“I think there are some fundamentals that you can carry over, some fundamentals in terms of understanding that you can carry over into next year’s car,” he said. “Some other aspects we will have to understand how to transfer them from this car to next year’s car, for instance the aerodynamic aspects that influence the behaviour of the tyres.”

Horner also recognises it as a potential key to success, not just for the remainder of this season, but also the longer term: “If you look at the data after the race, all the cars faced similar problems. But McLaren can manage these things much better.”

It emphasises that McLaren’s dominance isn’t just about the wings. Stricter front wing tests come into play in Barcelona in June, and Red Bull still believe that it can affect the pecking order, but this aspect might be even more interesting.

On this front, there is no FIA intervention in sight for now, meaning that the opposition needs to find ways to improve its tyre wear – at least for hot and high-deg races. It’s essential in two ways for the likes of Red Bull. First, to give Verstappen the tools he needs to fight for the 2025 crown and secondly, to take that knowledge into the upcoming years.

The current picture above all confirms: the “black art” that Stella speaks of is of undeniable importance in modern F1 and McLaren is the absolute master of it at the moment.