FootyChatter.com

Formula 1 A cold, grey February day at Silverstone hardly felt like the bedrock upon which one of the most dominant championship wins in Formula One history would be built. For Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, the shakedown test offered the chance to get behind the wheel of the Mc Laren MCL39, finally. They’d only get a handful of laps, yet it would be enough to glean first impressions of the car they’d use to defend the constructors’ title Mc Laren clinched just two months prior in Abu Dhabi – the team’s first in 26 years. Advertisement The launch of the car also gave Andrea Stella, Mc Laren’s team principal and the catalyst in so much of its recent success, the chance to send a message to its rivals. As the team to beat, Mc Laren could’ve played it safe and built on its existing platform, a car capable of winning a championship. Instead, chasing innovation, it went on the attack. Stella told reporters at the car launch that Mc Laren had taken “a relatively challenging approach” with its car development for 2025, which was visible in changes to the chassis compared to 2024’s MCL38. Norris, the runner-up in last year’s world championship, felt nervous driving those first laps. He sensed how much had changed from the MCL38’s strong baseline, but still reported a decent first feeling. Those initial impressions sorely understated just how good Mc Laren’s car would turn out to be. Pre-season testing suggested Mc Laren would be the team to beat, but when racing started, it was evident it was the class of the field. Now, with six races to spare, Mc Laren has clinched a 10th F1 constructors’ championship win – secured in Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix with Norris’ third place and Piastri’s fourth place finish. With 656 points and a 329-point gap to second-place Mercedes with six races remaining, its lead is insurmountable. Mc Laren’s clinch tied Red Bull in 2023 for the earliest teams’ title win in F1 history by rounds remaining, but Mc Laren did not beat its own record of sealing the 1988 constructors’ title in late August. This is a championship win that defied everything expected from this season. In the fourth and final year of a car design regulations cycle, and with car development returns diminishing, the pack had converged in performance terms. Red Bull found that out the hard way, going from winning 22 out of 23 races in 2023 to fading through the second half of last year and allowing Mc Laren and Ferrari to surge ahead. The papaya team pipped its Italian rival to the 2024 constructors’ title. Both looked poised to slug it out again this year, only for Mc Laren to end that narrative immediately. Advertisement The old paddock cliché of there being no silver bullets in F1 — unlocking single, significant jumps in performance in an instant — has been disproven somewhat this year. Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes all feel they made good progress from 2024 to 2025 with their cars. But Mc Laren just had a lot more. “The car itself is just a much better car, ” Stella said in the FIA news conference in Baku. “It’s very innovative compared to last year. We decided to go for development in pretty much every single part of the car. We required some bravery in some areas – for instance, in the front suspension and some other parts that are less visible. “For me, that’s where the biggest step forward has happened. ” It was a step that first emerged in Bahrain testing, notably on the second day when Norris put in a mighty race simulation at the day’s end. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said Mc Laren looked to be “on a different planet. ” Unlike the rest of the teams, which seemed more coy and cautious about their hopes for the year, Mc Laren had a quiet confidence about its business. The Australia season opener proved why. Norris only beat Verstappen by less than a second at the flag, but prior to the rain shower that turned the race on its head and induced a rare Piastri mistake, costing him second place, the Mc Larens were over 15 seconds up the road. The Red Bull’s tires simply couldn’t hold on while sustaining the pace of its rivals ahead. That key strength for the long runs on a Sunday only underpinned the outright speed of the Mc Laren that kept shining through on a Saturday in qualifying. This wasn’t a car that came alive in certain conditions; it was quick everywhere. Besides Lewis Hamilton’s sprint win in China — now looking anomalous in the story of his underwhelming first Ferrari season — and some brilliance from Verstappen to win from pole at Suzuka, Piastri and Norris were untouchable through the early flyways. As these progressed, they pushed each other to new heights. The 37-second gap to George Russell’s Mercedes in Miami laid bare just how big the gulf had grown. Advertisement “I think everybody was surprised, ” Charles Leclerc told The Athletic in an interview when discussing Mc Laren’s advantage. “That’s not insinuating anything bad. They’ve done an incredible job, and they found something that nobody else did. “Everybody seemed to be converging towards the same direction. And then you’re like, ‘OK, we’re just going to try and improve every little thing on the car to do the final step. ’ And Mc Laren came and basically destroyed everybody. ” It put Mc Laren into fresh territory in this era. After so long fighting down the order, it’d come to learn how to win regularly through 2024. Stella said its success arrived earlier than planned. Mc Laren surprised itself. Teething troubles such as managing team orders and ‘papaya’ racing rules last year laid the foundations for 2025, as Norris and Piastri often found themselves with only each other contending for victory. A team that was last early in 2023 was now dominant. “Last season went down to the final race, and a pretty eventful final race as well, ” Piastri said on Thursday in Azerbaijan. “This year, clearly, the car has been a step better, the team has been performing very well. There’s much more of a sense of inevitability about this year, which is an amazing position to be in. ” Speaking in Singapore, Norris put Mc Laren’s success this year down to two things: a strong car, and having two drivers pushing each other hard each weekend. “As a constructor, you need two drivers who deliver every weekend, who finish most races. And that’s what we’ve been able to do. Maybe not the last couple (of races at Monza and Baku), but until that point, we’ve been the best performing duo as drivers. And we’ve clearly had the best car and been the best team. ” Last season’s intensity when Norris regularly raced against Verstappen was expected to foreshadow a close title fight through 2025 – one that could drag teams into a development race that might draw precious resources and attention away from the new designs that need to be produced for 2026. Advertisement Instead, it was clear only a few races into the season where this year’s constructors’ title would be heading. Seasons of such domination are hardly rare throughout F1 history. But they are at the end of a regulation cycle. In 2021, Red Bull and Mercedes were so finely matched that the title fight between Verstappen and Hamilton went the distance – ending in controversy in Abu Dhabi. Sebastian Vettel dominated the end of 2013 with nine straight wins, but Red Bull had faced competition through the early part of that season. The 2008 season was neck and neck between Ferrari and Mc Laren, with the championship again being decided at the end of the year, and BMW (now Sauber) also coming close that year. Mc Laren’s step clear has not only been impressive, but it has also come without one team regularly nipping at its heels. Verstappen has helmed Red Bull’s efforts alone, with the RB21 car still suffering the hangover of last year’s struggles. This has limited him to just three wins so far. Mercedes nabbed a win in Canada with Russell, only to then suffer a mid-year slump as its updated rear suspension hurt its performance, especially on Kimi Antonelli’s side of the garage. Ferrari had to wait until Spa for its own rear suspension update to try and cure the ride height issues that led to its double disqualification in China, forcing costly subsequent compromises with car setup. As these three teams so often exchanged ‘best of the rest’ honors and failed to rack up solid double-points hauls, Mc Laren could ease clear at the front. Yet at no point has it taken its advantage for granted. Weekends such as Monza, where Verstappen was out of reach, or Canada, where Piastri and Norris made contact while fighting over ‘only’ fourth place, weren’t brushed off. The humility that Stella and Zak Brown, Mc Laren Racing’s CEO, have worked to instill as a core part of the team’s culture has remained unchanged despite this year’s success. Even on Friday in Baku, when he was asked about the constructors’ title, Stella started his answer by saying: “First of all, let’s go and win it. It’s not ours yet! ” Advertisement Now, it is. Back-to-back constructors’ titles for the first time since 1991 — more than eight years before either Norris or Piastri were born — and clinched in a fashion few predicted. The final six races won’t offer Mc Laren much serenity in which it can revel in its success or relax, either. The drivers’ championship fight between Piastri and Norris is set to rage on a while longer, as Mc Laren insists it will stick to its racing principles as it did by swapping its cars after Norris’ slow stop at Monza. There may be no greater height for the team to scale in 2025 – the constructors’ championship and attached staff bonuses now secure. But for the sake of the future, as Piastri and Norris continue as teammates, the policy for the drivers will go unchanged. “We want to protect the unity of the team, which is a foundational condition for the future, ” Stella said. That’s for then. In the here and now, on Sunday night in Singapore, Mc Laren can at least celebrate tearing up F1’s expected 2025 script for one of the most inevitable – but somewhat unlikely – championship wins in recent history.   (Top image: Mark Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Luke Smith is a Senior Writer covering Formula 1 for The Athletic. Luke has spent 10 years reporting on Formula 1 for outlets including Autosport, The New York Times and NBC Sports, and is also a published author. He is a graduate of University College London. Follow Luke on Twitter @Luke Smith F1