2025 McLaren F1 Team

[Ben1980]

It seems kind of random to speculate that an engine will make a team break the cost cap. Tsunoda already took a 5th PU some races ago. Hamilton took a 5th some races ago after poor qualifying as well. Other back markers have done it. I don't recall the scrutiny? Is it any different to assuming all of Piastri's collisions have already put Mclaren over the cap?

It's kind of amusing how terrified Mclaren still are while holding the WCC and a 49 point lead in WDC. Lando can't possibly fumble this right?

Don't think Mclaren are suggesting an engine will break the cistern cap. They just want it raised and clarified so that no creative accounting can claim it to be a reliability change.

I'm not talking about Mclaren. I'm talking about the comment from the poster that I have replied to. They've suggested that this engine must mean they have now exceeded the cap.

Saying imagine isn't a suggesting of fact.

[AR3-GP]

It’s not about fear or defensiveness. McLaren have every right to ask for clarification when something seems questionable. Red Bull have done the same plenty of times. They challenged McLaren’s mini-DRS and the FIA acted. Max was more than 60 points ahead of Lando when that happened. Were Red Bull so scared of McLaren that they needed to complain back then? Of course not.

Yes Red Bull was concerned with their 60 points gap. Mclaren had a much faster car since Imola, and then Mercedes and Ferrari also had faster cars several times. 60 points is nothing with the 4th best car.

[CjC]

It’s not about fear or defensiveness. McLaren have every right to ask for clarification when something seems questionable. Red Bull have done the same plenty of times. They challenged McLaren’s mini-DRS and the FIA acted. Max was more than 60 points ahead of Lando when that happened. Were Red Bull so scared of McLaren that they needed to complain back then? Of course not.

Yes Red Bull was concerned with their 60 points gap. Mclaren had a much faster car since Imola, and then Mercedes and Ferrari also had faster cars several times. 60 points is nothing with the 4th best car.

So McLaren can’t be concerned when they have a 49 point gap to someone who also on their day can be the fastest package on the grid.

Tying yourself in knots and double standards galore here

[AR3-GP]

So McLaren can’t be concerned when they have a 49 point gap to someone who also on their day can be the fastest package on the grid.

Lando Norris won Mexico with 30 seconds, was fastest in the race in COTA, and could have put another 10 seconds on the field in Brazil. There is no indication that Red Bull is the fastest package anywhere.

Mclaren's fight is not with Red Bull. Lando no longer has to win races. He can simply finish on the podium which is something that he has managed the most of any Mclaren driver in history already.

[CjC]

So McLaren can’t be concerned when they have a 49 point gap to someone who also on their day can be the fastest package on the grid.

Lando Norris won Mexico with 30 seconds, was fastest in the race in COTA, and could have put another 10 seconds on the field in Brazil. There is no indication that Red Bull is the fastest package anywhere.

Mclaren's fight is not with Red Bull. Lando no longer has to win races. He can simply finish on the podium which is something that he has managed the most of any Mclaren driver in history already.

Quite true.

But we are amongst the new rivalry of the 2 most current successful teams. Mclaren question Red Bull to the FIA and vise versa.

You can’t expect McLaren to sit in their hands to wait and see, they currently enjoy an edge and want to maintain it as long as possible.
It’s what the teams have been doing since the dawn of the sport

[Emag]

So McLaren can’t be concerned when they have a 49 point gap to someone who also on their day can be the fastest package on the grid.

Lando Norris won Mexico with 30 seconds, was fastest in the race in COTA, and could have put another 10 seconds on the field in Brazil. There is no indication that Red Bull is the fastest package anywhere.

Mclaren's fight is not with Red Bull. Lando no longer has to win races. He can simply finish on the podium which is something that he has managed the most of any Mclaren driver in history already.

I don't get these statements honestly. All McLaren critics complain that McLaren/Lando downplays the car too much and then you go and make statements like these which are exactly the same but from the other way around. Why don't you recognize that RedBull did a good job and turned the car around? They somehow messed up Brazil preparation catastrophically, but evidently the car still wasn't bad. It had the fastest race pace. And you can't go ahead and negate that while claiming that McLaren had the fastest car in Austin because Lando had the fastest race pace

Now for RedBull, they were the fastest in Monza. Comfortably at that. Max had a very comfortable Baku win as well, in part because of a big McLaren fumble, but it's not like they were looking favorites for pole before the mess that was Q3. And the pace in the race was nothing special from Lando either. Not much can be said about Mexico. Lando had it completely covered. Unlikely anyone would have touched him. But again, it's not like RedBull had a dumpster of a car. It was the second fastest car come race day. It just looked bad that first stint because mediums were sh*t and Max got caught up in shenanigans.

And now coming to Brazil, the 10s was hardly impressive. If anything, it showed that McLaren were not as fast as they probably expected after Mexico.

But what puzzles me is all these people who claim "ah but Lando could have easily pulled another 10s out of his ass". I mean on what account is that assessment made? The guy literally said he was pushing and the first thing he said after the race was that he was not happy with the 10s gap either. The guy was pushing man, that was the pace, that's the gap he could pull. There wasn't another 10 second in it.

Lando had an easy race. Clean air all the time with the exception of half a lap spent behind Max. If anything, he actually lost ground to Max throughout the race. The grid spread from P1-P20 is probably more than 10 seconds. For Max to finish within that at the end while having to go through traffic on top of that just goes to show that McLaren didn't have a car that was guaranteed a cruise to victory had RedBull nailed the setup from the get go and started higher up.

And you can twist it however you want and say that's the driver's problem and not the car's problem, because I can see it coming. In any case, even if you believe that to be true, it's irrelevant. The car is as fast as the best driver can drive it. So I don't know how one evaluates this "invisible potential". Lando was the best McLaren driver in Brazil and he had worse race pace than a severely handicapped Max.

Now we are heading into Las Vegas, which if history is to be taken into consideration, there is a high likelihood Lando will drop a lot of points to Max. All you need is a DNF to happen after that (which sometimes its not really in your control) and suddenly Abu Dhabi becomes crucial just like it was last year. And it's not like any of the upcoming tracks are not good RedBull tracks. If McLaren is not winning them, RedBull/Max will.

Is Max the favourite for the championship? No, not really. Don't think anyone can say that with a straight face. But let's not pretend like it's totally out of the realm of possibilities. He will need luck, and a lot of it (or a mega fumble by Lando, for 3 weekends straight), but he is still in it. And until he is no longer in it, he should be considered a threat. You would be a naive team if you ignored Max Verstappen.

[AR3-GP]

I don't get these statements honestly. All McLaren critics complain that McLaren/Lando downplays the car too much and then you go and make statements like these which are exactly the same but from the other way around. Why don't you recognize that RedBull did a good job and turned the car around? They somehow messed up Brazil preparation catastrophically, but evidently the car still wasn't bad. It had the fastest race pace. And you can't go ahead and negate that while claiming that McLaren had the fastest car in Austin because Lando had the fastest race pace

This is really getting juvenile. Lando Norris was saving for 2/3rds of the race. Unless you think he is mysteriously half a second a lap slower than Oscar Piastri? Red Bull was not fastest. As usual people get caught up in Max's drives to talk about the car, and then completely ignore what Lando Norris was doing out front yesterday. Lando Norris was babysitting his car. Look at how fast Oscar Piastri was. If Lando Norris was actually driving flat out, it would have put Verstappen's pace to shade. Why is this a debate?

[Emag]

Why are you comparing stints like that, discounting the offset and the fact that Lando’s last medium set was quite extensively used. Driver’s babying tires is seriously just not a real thing to the extent people think it is. They save just enough to leave a comfort margin and not take unnecessary risk. Beyond that, they’re pushing all the time. Why would Lando purposefully choose to stand 6s ahead of Kimi if he could be 16s ahead of Kimi?

[AR3-GP]

Why are you comparing stints like that, discounting the offset and the fact that Lando’s last medium set was quite extensively used.

Lando's medium tires at the end were the same age as Oscar's. What information do you have that says otherwise? Tire saving can be the only explanation for Lando driving upwards of half a second a lap slower in final stint until Oscar Piastri got into the dirty air of George Russell. He had a safe gap to 2nd place. Lando's lack of degradation in the soft tire stint also shows how much saving he was doing. He did virtually the same laptimes on lap 1 and lap 18 of a soft tire stint.




There is no indication that Lando Norris was stressed about anything or anyone yesterday. The data doesn't support it. What are you seeing that I do not?

[mvfad]

Lando's stint on the soft tires was very, very, very weak (it seemed to me that his delta was Antonelli's lap time).
The only logical thing I could think of at the time was that they were trying to go to the end of the race with that red tire.

[Emag]

Why are you comparing stints like that, discounting the offset and the fact that Lando’s last medium set was quite extensively used.

Lando's medium tires at the end were the same age as Oscar's. Tire saving can be the only explanation for Lando driving upwards of half a second a lap slower other than Oscar Piastri until Oscar Piastri got into the dirty air of George Russell. He had a safe gap to 2nd place. Lando's lack of degradation in the soft tire stint also shows how much saving he was doing. He did virtually the same laptimes on lap 1 and lap 18 of a soft tire stint.

https://i.postimg.cc/vBxjyVJs/image.png


There is no indication that Lando Norris was stressed about anything or anyone yesterday. The data doesn't support it. What are you seeing that I do not?

The soft stint was planned to be slow & consistent because they were evaluating options. The medium stint, maybe tire-age wise it was similar to Oscar, but tire-condition wise it wasn't. He was being asked to go slow by the team to "stabilize the tire" and a couple of laps before the end he was also asked to try and minimize wheelspin, messages that Oscar did not receive. The point still stands though, why would he stay so close to Kimi if there's a possibility Max blitzes past him and comes for your a**? Having a big gap it's always better than having a small gap. Tire saving is no excuse. He pulled it off in Mexico, because he could. He didn't pull it off in Brazil, because he couldn't.

[mvfad]

With the medium tires at the end, perhaps it wasn't to save the tires, but to use a milder engine map to avoid any problems...

[Emag]

Just in general, there is no incentive whatsoever to stay within the "danger zone" gap-wise if you have the pace to go fast. If not for peace of mind, you do it to cover undercut threats under safety cars. If there is a safety car and the car behind can pit to put in fresh tires but you can't without losing track position, then you're screwed.

There hasn't been a single race where a lead driver has, in purpose, chosen to remain within 10s of the car behind, including Lando.

[CjC]

Emag, Max wasn’t handicapped in Brazil.
Yes he started from the pitlane but he had 3 attempts to set his car up and finally found the right set up.
He also had new tyres left right and centre. Watching Max’s race partly reminded me of when Pirelli first entered the sport and their tyre life was horrendous, so having fresh tyres to bolt on gave the drivers 5-6 seconds per stint over drivers who qualified at the front. It was reminiscent of Mark Webber in China 2011 where he qualified P18 and finished P3 on the podium as well, also aided by fresh tyres in every stint

[AR3-GP]

The soft stint was planned to be slow & consistent because they were evaluating options.

Managing and not going as fast as possible...So we're on the same page.

The medium stint, maybe tire-age wise it was similar to Oscar, but tire-condition wise it wasn't. He was being asked to go slow by the team to "stabilize the tire" and a couple of laps before the end he was also asked to try and minimize wheelspin, messages that Oscar did not receive.

What indication is there that the "condition" was different? This seems made up. Lando and Oscar were in different races. Lando had a 7 second lead out front and simply had to manage to the end. Antonelli was never catching him and neither was Max. The soft tires had too much deg for Max at that pace. Come on now.... Max catching Lando when Lando wasn't even going full speed? Anyway, Oscar was scrambling to save what remains of this championship challenge by passing George Russell. Of course they aren't telling him to manage wheel spin. He had nothing to lose. Bearman was 10 seconds behind him. If Oscar's tires went, he could coast home. If they didn't, he could pass Russell for more points.

The point still stands though, why would he stay so close to Kimi if there's a possibility Max blitzes past him and comes for your a**? Having a big gap it's always better than having a small gap. Tire saving is no excuse. He pulled it off in Mexico, because he could. He didn't pull it off in Brazil, because he couldn't.

That possibility exist in the same place where Mclaren is still trying to "cover Leclerc". Narnia.