2025 McLaren F1 Team

[Emag]

https://racingnews365.com/toto-wolff-hi ... -f1-change

Interesting from Toto. Could it be McLaren they drop if indeed a customer is dropped?

I would guess Alpine is the primary choice here, because it literally makes no sense why they're even using Mercedes engines to begin with. But who knows, if McLaren continues to be very successful going into the new regulation cycle, Mercedes maybe decides they "have had enough" in 2030 and stop the cooperation.

Toto was asked if Mercedes takes any joy out of the success of MCL and the answer was a pretty clear no; Toto went on to say that HPP only exists for one reason and that is to make Mercedes champions. Also, they might even drop 2 teams if they feel that's what gives them the best balance of feedback and reduced timelines for decision making.

So, if MCL continue to perform better than Mercedes even if they don't win the championship, it could definitely force Toto's hands, but I don't think it would be a big problem for MCL if it were to happen, I think Honda or someone else would do a good enough job replacing Merc.

It's definitely not a good look to be consistently beaten by your customer, but from another perspective, if the main team isn't winning, it's not the worst thing in the world to have the engine on the top spot at least. In any case, if Mercedes is still behind McLaren next year, then they have some bigger problems to take care off until 2030.

As things stand right now, McLaren does not have the capabilities to build a competitive in-house power unit. Which is somewhat weird for a car company, however their automotive business was kind of a niche thing for a long time. McLaren was primarily a racing business. However, the automotive side has seen growth in the last couple of years. In 2024 I think there was a 50% increase in their car sales and probably they have been selling more in 2025 too. I don't know how much of that is driven by the F1 success, but there's been a lot of money from the middle east that was poured into them too. If these growth rates are maintained, then perhaps by 2030 they will be in a position where financing a new division for Engine manufacturing at MTC could be a sensible decision for their automotive business as well.