2025 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

You can consider it bad luck, but there's plenty of dumb stuff McLaren has done this seasons that has cost their drivers points (ignoring here the driver error themselves).

- They didn't split strategies in Japan. They literally tried nothing to take the win away from Max.
- Didn't go for mediums in Q3 Canada when they were clearly the superior tire. Left their drivers on a bad track position even though pace was probably good enough for a P2 there.
- Baku, badly managed in Q3 for Lando, leaving him on used softs for the last run.
- Complete misscalculation in Vegas costing a double DSQ (without it, Abu Dhabi would have been almost a formality)
- Qatar, amateur hour not pitting in lap 7 on a safety car. Not only did they gift Max the win on a silver platter, but they cost Lando the podium as well. Net >10 points on Max's favor in one weekend alone just due to horrible execution.

The "team errors" narrative is doing a lot of heavy lifting (also Monza was immaterial so I've removed it). There weren't that many and the drivers had more than enough opportunities to score more points but they can only perform within their limitations. Neither driver would be 2pts behind the championship winner in any other car this season. They'd likely be 100+ pts back despite a DSQ in Las Vegas (which ultimately circles back to the drivers who Mclaren were overcompensating for with the car setup since they failed to knock Verstappen out of the race much sooner).

Piastri completely collapsed in the 2nd half. After amassing a 104 pts lead, he never finished in front of Verstappen again. This is despite Mclaren being quicker in at least 7 of the last 10. Only 1 was Mclaren's fault (Qatar) and it was only a 14 points swing. Compare it to last year. Verstappen had a significant car deficit and was essentially never faster than Mclaren after Miami yet he grew his championship lead. Meanwhile Piastri couldn't hold on to a 104 points lead despite having a car no worse and often much better than Red Bull for majority of the 2nd half. That's on him, not Mclaren.

Lando also had terrible form in the first half.
P3 qualy in China
P6 qualy in Bahrain
P10 qualy in Jeddah
He should have been on pole in Japan
Canada: Lando Norris made a mess of qualifying, put himself behind his slower teammate, and then crashed out trying to pass him.
Baku - Hit the wall in qualifying, did nothing in the race (P7).
Qatar: Mclaren didn't cost Lando anything. His own pace did. Lando was P3 after losing place on merit to Max in the first corner. He would have finished P3 if he kept pace with Oscar after the restart. It was his lack of pace that made him fall to P5/P4 after the last pitstop. Oscar restarted on lap 10 in the same place as Lando, and beat SAI/ANT.

The reason that it was close is because of Verstappen even if Verstappen denied it. He can be modest at times.

[f1isgood]

Lando or Oscar had a car to finish P1/P2/P3 every race except Vegas. Lando profited a lot from the car being way too good (when he was struggling) before Red Bull got a car that could fight with them. Oscar's slump came at the wrong time.

Max/RB won 6 races in 9 with a somewhat competitive car that was in my opinion only clearly best at Monza and Abu Dhabi. Both McLaren victories came in very dominant fashion at Mexico and Brazil during the same time.

I think if Max had the RB21 from Monza onwards from the beginning of the season, McLaren drivers would have finished more than a 100 points behind in a similar car. Even since Spain really. That Spain upgrade had to deliver and it didn't as much as expected and we all know what happened.

This year underscores what a stellar job Max did last year against the current WDC. He gained more points in a much slower car while the latter threw away a title in the best car. This set of drivers are simply not ready for Verstappen and I don't think they will ever be, to fight him over 24 races.

[PierreW]

Max of course always has the benefit of getting the most points in his team, with no one taking them away from him and the benefit of a second team to manage pit gaps and create DRS trains. It's fairly likely that without that, the WDC would have been wrapped up a long time ago and hence all of the spotlight on the Mclaren team and the way they run things. Like many, I don't look upon it the same way and love the way this Mclaren does things.

They make mistakes, of course, but they continue to improve as they have done in every area and no doubt the drivers will improve once more and soon enough we will have also taken Will Courtenay, so hopefully the scales will further tip in Mclaren's favour and we can fight for a third WCC crown in a row next year.

If Max is getting the most point in his team, it is because he is a step above his teammates.

Norris is a good 8/10 driver, but he is evenly matched with Piastri, and not better than Leclerc or even maybe Russell.If Max had the McLaren this year, he would have won the championship, and not by two points.

[Emag]

...

Again, you're twisting things to put the blame entirely on the drivers even on those cases where the team did their job unnecessarily harder. The drivers were not perfect, nobody is denying that. Including driver's errors, this should have been a 100+ lead WDC, but even Max Verstappen would have lost his mind against some of the decisions McLaren took this season.

There is no "single" reason why it was close in the end. There were plenty of reasons that when put together created a big chance for Max to take it in the end when realistically, he shouldn't have been in contention at all going into Abu Dhabi. The "simplest" fix for McLaren would have been to have a clear number 1 driver pace-wise, instead of two drivers who were really close with each other taking points out of each other. No need to have a "completely useless" second driver either. Even with a 60-40 split (which is a normal distribution for a team with a clear #1 but a decent #2), the top McLaren driver would have finished the season with 500 points, a tally that would have sealed the championship with races to spare even considering all the shenanigans.

But I am not going to get any more into this. I am glad this season is over. A lot of interesting takes from various perspectives, both from the hardware side as well as the on-track side. I am kind of hoping neither RedBull nor McLaren are in it for anything meaningful next year. Would be nice to have a "change of scenery" after almost 1.5 years of tractor vs rocketship talks.

[Badger]

Max of course always has the benefit of getting the most points in his team, with no one taking them away from him and the benefit of a second team to manage pit gaps and create DRS trains. It's fairly likely that without that, the WDC would have been wrapped up a long time ago and hence all of the spotlight on the Mclaren team and the way they run things. Like many, I don't look upon it the same way and love the way this Mclaren does things.

They make mistakes, of course, but they continue to improve as they have done in every area and no doubt the drivers will improve once more and soon enough we will have also taken Will Courtenay, so hopefully the scales will further tip in Mclaren's favour and we can fight for a third WCC crown in a row next year.

No benefit having a teammate that far behind, he's completely irrelevant strategically and never takes points off the McLaren drivers, we saw it today. The accusations about Racing Bulls are conspiratorial nonsense. "Manage pit gaps and create DRS trains"

McLaren botched the end of the year, that's what happened. The team made mistakes, the drivers made mistakes, and on the other side RB and Max were almost flawless.

[mwillems]

Max of course always has the benefit of getting the most points in his team, with no one taking them away from him and the benefit of a second team to manage pit gaps and create DRS trains. It's fairly likely that without that, the WDC would have been wrapped up a long time ago and hence all of the spotlight on the Mclaren team and the way they run things. Like many, I don't look upon it the same way and love the way this Mclaren does things.

They make mistakes, of course, but they continue to improve as they have done in every area and no doubt the drivers will improve once more and soon enough we will have also taken Will Courtenay, so hopefully the scales will further tip in Mclaren's favour and we can fight for a third WCC crown in a row next year.

No benefit having a teammate that far behind, he's completely irrelevant strategically and never takes points off the McLaren drivers, we saw it today. The accusations about Racing Bulls are conspiratorial nonsense. "Manage pit gaps and create DRS trains"

McLaren botched the end of the year, that's what happened. The team made mistakes, the drivers made mistakes, and on the other side RB and Max were almost flawless.

Of course there is a benefit lol If Mclaren had a clear number one the WDC would be wrapped up, whether he was a little bit behind or Yuki level behind.

[mwillems]

Max of course always has the benefit of getting the most points in his team, with no one taking them away from him and the benefit of a second team to manage pit gaps and create DRS trains. It's fairly likely that without that, the WDC would have been wrapped up a long time ago and hence all of the spotlight on the Mclaren team and the way they run things. Like many, I don't look upon it the same way and love the way this Mclaren does things.

They make mistakes, of course, but they continue to improve as they have done in every area and no doubt the drivers will improve once more and soon enough we will have also taken Will Courtenay, so hopefully the scales will further tip in Mclaren's favour and we can fight for a third WCC crown in a row next year.

If Max is getting the most point in his team, it is because he is a step above his teammates.

Norris is a good 8/10 driver, but he is evenly matched with Piastri, and not better than Leclerc or even maybe Russell.If Max had the McLaren this year, he would have won the championship, and not by two points.

It is also because his team are entirely focussed on him, and because the car seemingly can't be driven by others. I appreciate Max is a great driver, but the idea that he got to the end of the season and in the fight was as much because no one in his team takes points of him and because in the orange team they have a car for both drivers and choose not to favour one.

I'm not arguing about what is right or wrong, just making the quite obvious point that Max' talent alone wasn't what got him to the fight at the end of the year, circumstances outside of the car mitigated some of the effects of being in the second fastest car for the first half of the season, unfortunately not enough for when he had the fastest car soon after the break.

Hopefully the RB Engine woes are a smokescreen and there will be more battles, it would genuinely be a shame to see RB suffer in midfield for a few seasons, and it will be very interesting to see if the Mclaren trajectory continues, including in strategy.

[AR3-GP]

Max of course always has the benefit of getting the most points in his team, with no one taking them away from him and the benefit of a second team to manage pit gaps and create DRS trains. It's fairly likely that without that, the WDC would have been wrapped up a long time ago and hence all of the spotlight on the Mclaren team and the way they run things. Like many, I don't look upon it the same way and love the way this Mclaren does things.

Mclaren isn't telling Oscar and Lando to be close. Mclaren never sought for it to be the case either. That's not what the Papaya rules are about. They simply hired the best drivers that they can get, and it turns out that there are a lot of merely good drivers (Norris,Piastri), but very few exceptional ones (Verstappen, Schumacher, Senna, Alonso, Ham, etc). It's hard to be exceptional. That goes by definition. You've seen what Max Verstappen did to Lando Norris last year with a far worse car and Lando Norris is a very good driver, Top 5 on the grid. So this hypothetical driver which is consistently splitting points with an exceptional driver like Max Verstappen must be another exceptional driver. There are very few of those in history. What you types never seem to be able to explain is how a multi-billion dollar company became beholden to what is in your view a "merely good" driver. There are plenty of "merely good" drivers to choose from. So why does RBR seem to orbit around Max Verstappen, and why was Mercedes and multiple other teams ready to orbit around Max Verstappen at the expense of George Russell nd whoever their drivers are? What do you know that they don't?

[DDopey]

Max of course always has the benefit of getting the most points in his team, with no one taking them away from him and the benefit of a second team to manage pit gaps and create DRS trains. It's fairly likely that without that, the WDC would have been wrapped up a long time ago and hence all of the spotlight on the Mclaren team and the way they run things. Like many, I don't look upon it the same way and love the way this Mclaren does things.

They make mistakes, of course, but they continue to improve as they have done in every area and no doubt the drivers will improve once more and soon enough we will have also taken Will Courtenay, so hopefully the scales will further tip in Mclaren's favour and we can fight for a third WCC crown in a row next year.

If Max is getting the most point in his team, it is because he is a step above his teammates.

Norris is a good 8/10 driver, but he is evenly matched with Piastri, and not better than Leclerc or even maybe Russell.If Max had the McLaren this year, he would have won the championship, and not by two points.

It is also because his team are entirely focussed on him, and because the car seemingly can't be driven by others. I appreciate Max is a great driver, but the idea that he got to the end of the season and in the fight was as much because no one in his team takes points of him and because in the orange team they have a car for both drivers and choose not to favour one.

I'm not arguing about what is right or wrong, just making the quite obvious point that Max' talent alone wasn't what got him to the fight at the end of the year, circumstances outside of the car mitigated some of the effects of being in the second fastest car for the first half of the season, unfortunately not enough for when he had the fastest car soon after the break.

This is just guessing, trying to find a narrative where it is possible to downgrade the achievements of Verstappen. The achievements of Verstappen always need to be put in some kind of context rather than be judged at face value. It is the car, its his aggression, its his louse team mates, its the team only focused at him, etc. etc. There will always be new reasons invented to downplay his skill.

[mwillems]

Max of course always has the benefit of getting the most points in his team, with no one taking them away from him and the benefit of a second team to manage pit gaps and create DRS trains. It's fairly likely that without that, the WDC would have been wrapped up a long time ago and hence all of the spotlight on the Mclaren team and the way they run things. Like many, I don't look upon it the same way and love the way this Mclaren does things.

Mclaren isn't telling Oscar and Lando to be close. Mclaren never sought for it to be the case either. That's not what the Papaya rules are about. They simply hired the best drivers that they can get, and it turns out that there are a lot of merely good drivers, but very few exceptional ones. It's hard to be exceptional. That goes by definition. You've seen what Max Verstappen did to Lando Norris last year with a far worse car and Lando Norris is a very good driver, Top 5 on the grid. So this hypothetical driver which is consistently splitting points with an exceptional driver like Max Verstappen must be another exceptional driver. There are very few of those in history.

This sums up the mentality. This only looks at one side of the equation. Point is, if Oscar hadn't developed so well, the optics would be entirely different, but like this post, the optics tend to only look at a fans favourite side of the discussion. it is a simple fact of circumstance that it was circumstance that got Max so far this year, and fair play for taking advantage of it.

[mwillems]

If Max is getting the most point in his team, it is because he is a step above his teammates.

Norris is a good 8/10 driver, but he is evenly matched with Piastri, and not better than Leclerc or even maybe Russell.If Max had the McLaren this year, he would have won the championship, and not by two points.

It is also because his team are entirely focussed on him, and because the car seemingly can't be driven by others. I appreciate Max is a great driver, but the idea that he got to the end of the season and in the fight was as much because no one in his team takes points of him and because in the orange team they have a car for both drivers and choose not to favour one.

I'm not arguing about what is right or wrong, just making the quite obvious point that Max' talent alone wasn't what got him to the fight at the end of the year, circumstances outside of the car mitigated some of the effects of being in the second fastest car for the first half of the season, unfortunately not enough for when he had the fastest car soon after the break.

This is just guessing, trying to find a narrative where it is possible to downgrade the achievements of Verstappen. The achievements of Verstappen always need to be put in some kind of context rather than be judged at face value. It is the car, its his aggression, its his louse team mates, its the team only focused at him, etc. etc. There will always be new reasons invented to downplay his skill.

It isn't mutually exclusive, he can be one of the best ever and have benefitted from circumstances, as well as been hindered by having the second best car for half a season.

[Gillian]

Max of course always has the benefit of getting the most points in his team, with no one taking them away from him and the benefit of a second team to manage pit gaps and create DRS trains. It's fairly likely that without that, the WDC would have been wrapped up a long time ago and hence all of the spotlight on the Mclaren team and the way they run things. Like many, I don't look upon it the same way and love the way this Mclaren does things.

Mclaren isn't telling Oscar and Lando to be close. Mclaren never sought for it to be the case either. That's not what the Papaya rules are about. They simply hired the best drivers that they can get, and it turns out that there are a lot of merely good drivers (Norris,Piastri), but very few exceptional ones (Verstappen, Schumacher, Senna, Alonso, Ham, etc). It's hard to be exceptional. That goes by definition. You've seen what Max Verstappen did to Lando Norris last year with a far worse car and Lando Norris is a very good driver, Top 5 on the grid. So this hypothetical driver which is consistently splitting points with an exceptional driver like Max Verstappen must be another exceptional driver. There are very few of those in history. What you types never seem to be able to explain is how a multi-billion dollar company became beholden to what is in your view a "merely good" driver. There are plenty of "merely good" drivers to choose from. So why does RBR seem to orbit around Max Verstappen, and why was Mercedes and multiple other teams ready to orbit around Max Verstappen at the expense of George Russell nd whoever their drivers are? What do you know that they don't?

Verstappen driving for McLaren against either driver would have been a one-sided story, "papaya-rules" or not.

Verstappen still 4 out of 2/3/4. Norris now 1 out of 2(?).

[Badger]

Max of course always has the benefit of getting the most points in his team, with no one taking them away from him and the benefit of a second team to manage pit gaps and create DRS trains. It's fairly likely that without that, the WDC would have been wrapped up a long time ago and hence all of the spotlight on the Mclaren team and the way they run things. Like many, I don't look upon it the same way and love the way this Mclaren does things.

They make mistakes, of course, but they continue to improve as they have done in every area and no doubt the drivers will improve once more and soon enough we will have also taken Will Courtenay, so hopefully the scales will further tip in Mclaren's favour and we can fight for a third WCC crown in a row next year.

No benefit having a teammate that far behind, he's completely irrelevant strategically and never takes points off the McLaren drivers, we saw it today. The accusations about Racing Bulls are conspiratorial nonsense. "Manage pit gaps and create DRS trains"

McLaren botched the end of the year, that's what happened. The team made mistakes, the drivers made mistakes, and on the other side RB and Max were almost flawless.

Of course there is a benefit lol If Mclaren had a clear number one the WDC would be wrapped up, whether he was a little bit behind or Yuki level behind.

Nope. Not with a useless teammate. It's a liability. He never takes points off the competition and has no strategic relevance, it becomes a problem, not a benefit. Yuki could never do what for example Massa did at the end of 2007.

If McLaren had Norris and a bad teammate far behind, that wouldn't only give points to Norris, it would also greatly improve the points yield for Verstappen. This notion that having two competitive teammates in the WDC is a big disadvantage isn't true, it's more complex.

[mwillems]

No benefit having a teammate that far behind, he's completely irrelevant strategically and never takes points off the McLaren drivers, we saw it today. The accusations about Racing Bulls are conspiratorial nonsense. "Manage pit gaps and create DRS trains"

McLaren botched the end of the year, that's what happened. The team made mistakes, the drivers made mistakes, and on the other side RB and Max were almost flawless.

Of course there is a benefit lol If Mclaren had a clear number one the WDC would be wrapped up, whether he was a little bit behind or Yuki level behind.

Nope. Not with a useless teammate. It's a liability. He never takes points off the competition and has no strategic relevance, it becomes a problem, not a benefit. Yuki could never do what for example Massa did at the end of 2007.

If McLaren had Norris and a bad teammate far behind, that wouldn't only give points to Norris, it would also greatly improve the points yield for Verstappen. This notion that having two competitive teammates in the WDC is a big disadvantage isn't true, it's more complex.

Whichever way you spin it, if Piastri ran at last years levels, the WDC was done a while back and this conversation doesn't happen.

[PierreW]

Max of course always has the benefit of getting the most points in his team, with no one taking them away from him and the benefit of a second team to manage pit gaps and create DRS trains. It's fairly likely that without that, the WDC would have been wrapped up a long time ago and hence all of the spotlight on the Mclaren team and the way they run things. Like many, I don't look upon it the same way and love the way this Mclaren does things.

They make mistakes, of course, but they continue to improve as they have done in every area and no doubt the drivers will improve once more and soon enough we will have also taken Will Courtenay, so hopefully the scales will further tip in Mclaren's favour and we can fight for a third WCC crown in a row next year.

If Max is getting the most point in his team, it is because he is a step above his teammates.

Norris is a good 8/10 driver, but he is evenly matched with Piastri, and not better than Leclerc or even maybe Russell.If Max had the McLaren this year, he would have won the championship, and not by two points.

It is also because his team are entirely focussed on him, and because the car seemingly can't be driven by others. I appreciate Max is a great driver, but the idea that he got to the end of the season and in the fight was as much because no one in his team takes points of him and because in the orange team they have a car for both drivers and choose not to favour one.

I'm not arguing about what is right or wrong, just making the quite obvious point that Max' talent alone wasn't what got him to the fight at the end of the year, circumstances outside of the car mitigated some of the effects of being in the second fastest car for the first half of the season, unfortunately not enough for when he had the fastest car soon after the break.

Hopefully the RB Engine woes are a smokescreen and there will be more battles, it would genuinely be a shame to see RB suffer in midfield for a few seasons, and it will be very interesting to see if the Mclaren trajectory continues, including in strategy.

The RB car does not have facial recognition features. It is hard to drive, too hard, and the car had a functionnal window which was too small and hard to exploit properly. It is a failure from the team, not Max demands.

You can't hold against Max that he was the only driver able to find pace in this year car. He would have loved to have a car like the McLaren which was extremely fast everywere out of the box with not a single set up problem. Piastri and Norris had the luxury to have the same car that worked well everywhere and they could enter a very easy and sweet spot to developp their confidence when RB was struggling and desperate to make any late set up change.