2025 McLaren F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

Drivers shouldn’t take the blame for a bad setup, but should take the credit when the setup is on point?… Interesting take

A setup can be on point, and you can still mess up the start or make a hash of overtaking. Lando's weaknesses show that for the regular driver, it's not so trivial to win races even with the best car. That should make everyone appreciate it more when it looks "easy". It's hard to make it look easy. Lando will be the first to tell you he struggled with it this year and last year.

[Emag]

Drivers shouldn’t take the blame for a bad setup, but should take the credit when the setup is on point?… Interesting take

A setup can be on point, and you can still mess up the start or make a hash of overtaking. Lando's weaknesses show that for the regular driver, it's not so trivial to win races even with the best car. That should make everyone appreciate it more when it looks "easy". It's hard to make it look easy. Lando will be the first to tell you he struggled with it this year and last year.

It is very trivial to win races with the best car, IF you don't have strong competition that can realistically challenge you.

And McLaren was no exception to this rule up until Monza. After that, RedBull (Max) was a legitimate challenger and we had more or less what we had in 2024. McLaren untouchable on weekends where everything aligned for them and RedBull/Max the overall better package (as in driver+team combo) on your average weekends.

Before that, they won every race except for 2 standout performances by Max in Suzuka and Imola + a weird Canada where they didn't enjoy the same pace advantage combined with bad execution by the team and drivers. And likely we would have seen more of the same in the second half had RedBull stopped developing their car.

So it is absolutely very trivial to win most races if you have a clearly superior package to the rest of the field. You might need a perfect driver to get that near 100% win rate (like Max in 2023), but losing the odd race here and there doesn't really change the dominance picture.

It was pretty much what Mercedes was doing to the competition before the ground effect era (minus the 2017-2018 blip)

[AR3-GP]

It is very trivial to win races with the best car, IF you don't have strong competition that can realistically challenge you.

It doesn't matter if the competition is strong or weak if you can't win the 1000m run to T1.

[Emag]

It is very trivial to win races with the best car, IF you don't have strong competition that can realistically challenge you.

It doesn't matter if the competition is strong or weak if you can't win the 1000m run to T1. The Ferrari was no match for the Mclaren in COTA, but after losing the place in T1, Lando still needed 50 laps to get past him. Overtaking is still hard, even in the best car.

So these things are and were never trivial. Otherwise Mclaren would have won the WDC last year. In the last two years we have discovered that there's nothing trivial about having the best car. We were more or less spoiled by people like Hamilton and Verstappen. Winning became taken for granted.

I respectfully disagree.

When Lewis started his streak with Mercedes, his car had virtually no rivals. He only had to beat Rosberg, who in hindsight was a better driver than he often gets credit for. That makes Lewis’ record against him even more impressive, though honestly he does not really need any status "boosters." He is the modern-era Schumacher, whether people admit it or not. Anyway irrelevant, because that's still the same team winning the races, which is the main focus of the conversation.

In 2017 and 2018, Mercedes faced some competition, but Lewis was only up against Vettel and his own teammate (again, same team, so it doesn't matter if Bottas or Lewis wins for this discussion). The midfield was over a second off per lap, an advantage so big, that they could literally use old tires and still overtake midfield cars on new hypersofts. After 2018, Ferrari fell off, leaving Mercedes unchallenged until 2021, when Lewis finally met a match and was beaten.

Max’s story is similar. Early on, he was close to Ferrari in 2022, and sure enough, he too lost races to Charles when he faced close competition. 2023 was again no contest. 2024 is very impressive, but it is not some un-explainable vodoo. Max capitalized on an early advantage, and while McLaren had a few standout performances, their overall pace advantage is vastly overblown. In reality, based on real statistics and data, 2024 was one of the closest seasons in years, with multiple cars within a few tenths. Perfect conditions for standouts like Max to rise above and snatch wins. He couldn't do any of that if his car wasn't good enough though, with literal proof with his performances in places like Monaco, Monza, Baku, Mexico etc ...

Then 2025 proves my point. Max, a generational talent, only won two races when his car was not top-tier. Meanwhile, McLaren dominated nearly every other race, showing how trivial it is to win when you lack close rivals, even with drivers who some people (perhaps you as well) would call "mid." Imagine how much easier it would be with someone better

And the advantage of McLaren was 2-3 tenths on average. It was still easy to win. Mercedes and RedBull had double that on their most dominant years.

[AR3-GP]

edit: not productive

[Emag]

Right, but I think you forgot what the original discussion was about.

What you just wrote here goes back to what I initially said.
It is absolutely very trivial to win races when you have a substantial enough advantage over the nearest rivals. It's the nature of the sport. Different eras have different dominating forces, but that's the only variable that changes. The best teams with the best cars win the most, and they do it with ease if unchallenged. You have to go back before the 90s to break that trend.

McLaren was literally no different to this in 2025. Up until Monza, the season was a breeze for McLaren as a team, they were pretty much winning everything. The challenge was between the drivers.

[AR3-GP]

It is absolutely very trivial to win races when you have a substantial enough advantage over the nearest rivals.

Yes, Lance stroll would also win races easily if he was given a car that was 2 seconds a lap faster than everyone else but what does that mean? Would Lance Stroll still make winning look easy with only 1 tenths a lap? Probably not. Would a different driver? Yes. Would the current Mclaren drivers? Probably not because of poor execution in qualifying or race starts and that's where certain drivers make a difference with a higher degree of execution and ability to get clean air even when they don't have the fastest car. If such a driver already makes it look trivial with nil advantage, what do you think happens when you give them 1 tenth or 2 tenths advantage? Straight domination. Mclarens advantage in the first part of this year was much bigger than this, especially on hot tracks. I'm not entertaining "2 to 3 tenths" when the competition was getting blown away at over half a second a lap in Australia, Miami and Bahrain.

[Emag]

It is absolutely very trivial to win races when you have a substantial enough advantage over the nearest rivals.

Yes, Lance stroll would also win races easily if he was given a car that was 2 seconds a lap faster than everyone else but what does that mean? Would Lance Stroll still make winning look easy with only 1 tenths a lap? Probably not. Would a different driver? Yes. Would the current Mclaren drivers? Probably not because of poor execution in qualifying or race starts and that's where certain drivers make a difference with a higher degree of execution and ability to get clean air even when they don't have the fastest car. If such a driver already makes it look trivial with nil advantage, what do you think happens when you give them 1 tenth or 2 tenths or 3 tenths advantage?

Now you're just pushing it to an hyperbole to dilute the main point, but no matter.

The problem that many people have is that they use one specific race as reference to build their narratives, and ignore the fact that the picture in F1 changes a lot race to race.

If one thinks McLaren's real advantage over the entire season should be based solely on their pace in Mexico, then I suppose you would be right to believe that McLaren must have some of the most mediocre drivers in the history of the sport to barely clinch the title with such a car. But that is not really the truth is it. Their pace advantage fluctuated a lot, and after Monza it was almost entirely nullified (if not flipped at certain tracks).

The other problem is that people like to make "fixed-point" evaluations of a specific driver's pace advantage over another. But these are completely baseless. The only evaluation you can reliably make from drivers of different teams is their consistency. The actual real pace gap between them, you cannot know. You can have your opinions, but the real gap between them is not measurable as long as they are in different cars.

And I am sure the entire gist of it lies in this last point. If you personally believe Max has at least 4-5 tenths on every driver of the current grid, then you're inclined to believe that winning is not easy when you have the fastest car, and it's all down to the driver.

The problem with that belief is that if you take it as truth, then that makes McLaren the best car even in races where they were completely outpaced (such as Monza this year). And as someone who likes to look at the numbers, I cannot really accept that as a truth, because it doesn't make sense.

If you have slightly more grounded beliefs about certain driver's advantage over others though, then it's pretty easy to admit that winning in this sport becomes almost trivial when you're given a good enough car by your team. And that's okay. It doesn't diminish anyone's greatest seasons. This is the nature of the sport. If you don't have the car, you can't achieve the results.

[AR3-GP]

edit: PM

[f1isgood]

I think the only race that McLaren drivers won this year away from Max was Jeddah. Every other close race he finished ahead of them.

I dont think McLaren drivers did their car much justice. Fact of the matter is neither driver can hold a candle to Max but thats okay, Max is exceptional and neither of them are and still one of them has a title. In the end, McLaren got their job done

[Emag]

But those are specific circumstantial and isolated cases. Some taken from a season which had a volatile pecking order. In some cases you are right though, the driver made the difference. The Spain 2024 as an example, where it was Lando's fault for not being perfect on the start.

However you have made extrapolations for other races based exactly on the same points I made that you said "nobody mentioned". Somehow you don't see it even though it's right there on the first example.

You say Lando lost Qatar 2024 while having the fastest car. What exactly makes you say that? He didn't get pole, he didn't inherit the lead of the race at any point and he didn't have a faster average pace than Max in the race either. Why is McLaren evaluated as the fastest car there, when every piece of data has RedBull/Max ahead?

Same thing for Cota 2025. None of the McLaren drivers were close to pole. Oscar was nowhere, but Lando was fighting with Leclerc and edged slightly ahead. Still 3 tenths down on Max. In the race, Lando lost out in the start (his fault again), while Max cruises to an easy victory. But somehow you consider this a race lost by Lando and not a race won by Max? You've literally said it before, you believe that drivers in the lead hold off pace and don't push, right. I suppose this is not valid for Max in Cota?

In any case, this becomes a pointless back-and-forth because it always boils down to some very one-sided views that you will always refuse to budge away from. I can respect that, it's your right.

Therefore, you can conclude that Mclaren drivers need more of a performance advantage to make winning look easy than some other drivers on the grid

Depends on what sort of gap you start considering a valid car advantage and what is just "noise" going from session-to-session. What McLaren had in the first part of the season, was a legitimate significant advantage. With that, their inperfect drivers won everything except 3 races. Everyone would consider that an "easy" run of victories surely. Beyond the second half, with the exception of Mexico and Brazil, there was no tangible advantage McLaren had over RedBull/Max. There it became a matter of the best driver winning (with just random spikes going both ways on some sessions). Of course in that scenario one would expect Max to win the most.

In any case, the sport proves me right. If you have a legitimate car advantage over your rivals, winning becomes trivial.

It was so easy for RedBull in 2023, 2013 and 2011.
It was very easy for Mercedes in 2014-2016 & 2019-2020.
It was very easy for Brawn in the first part of 2009 until others caught up.
etc ...

[mwillems]

The fastest car doesn’t always make winning trivial, but it does make it forgiving.

That distinction is important, and it’s where most of the disagreement seems to sit. “Fastest car” isn’t a static value, its based on circuit characteristics, weather, balance, and how well a given driver can actually get performance from it.

We’ve seen this even within teams. the same car can look dominant in one driver’s hands and far less so in anothers, or on certain tracks versus others. Earlier this the season, Norris struggled versus Piastri despite the underlying pace being there, but once the conditions and setup aligned, he got back on top.

The Red Bull is an example of a very fast car that only the best can unlock. It is quite possible that someone slightly less capable than Max would be finishing midfield at best, and we'd never have realised that it was capable of being the second fastest car on the grid and challenging for the title.

[AR3-GP]

The Red Bull is an example of a very fast car that only the best can unlock. It is quite possible that someone slightly less capable than Max would be finishing midfield at best, and we'd never have realised that it was capable of being the second fastest car on the grid and challenging for the title.

You could also say without Norris in the 2nd half, people would think the FIA nerfed Mclaren.

[mwillems]

The Red Bull is an example of a very fast car that only the best can unlock. It is quite possible that someone slightly less capable than Max would be finishing midfield at best, and we'd never have realised that it was capable of being the second fastest car on the grid and challenging for the title.

You could also say without Norris in the 2nd half, people would think the FIA nerfed Mclaren.

lol I have a reasonable feeling that I would not say that

[Ben1980]

We've had 24 races. On a wide variety of tracks at various different temperatures in the day and in the evening.

No one car will be the master of all of them, which means its reliant on if they have another team to challenge.

We knew from the start the Mclaren was on average the best race car, but straight away it was looking close in qualifying, and not just because drivers made errors.

We know both drivers could have done better at times but I'm sure that could be the same for every driver out there