2025 McLaren F1 Team

[Darth-Piekus]

Car needs to be better.

Drivers need to be better.

It's the point I've made since very early in the season, it isn't just one thing. Anyone point the finger squarely at the car or squarely at the drivers but it doesn't work like that.

People tend to forget that Max has 10 years of experience and 4 of them were on a championship winning level. Oscar is in his third year first time as a championship leader and he's already close to Max with cars that are equal or very close to each other. Have people forgotten how Max was in his first three years? Spoiler alert. Nowhere near this Oscar Piastri.

[f1isgood]

Found this picture with the two sets of inters taken off from McLaren cars after they pitted in the Sprint Race.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GqCulx-WkAE ... name=large

The tires on the right are Piastri's, those on the left are Lando's, who was pressuring Oscar when they were called to the pits. Very different wear and degradation for such a small difference in strategy. Lando has been lucky, but it hasn't been just that.

There's also something AR3 noticed about PIA's end of stint performances and they are usually lacklustre relative to NOR this entire year.

I feel like if NOR has clear air, he will just fly off every time. A bit of fix to qualifying and I think people will see a larger gap between PIA and NOR.

Not entirely surprising that NOR was on PIA's tail yesterday with much better management. It was also interesting to see NOR explicitly cool the tires while gaining on PIA.

[Slahinki]

Found this picture with the two sets of inters taken off from McLaren cars after they pitted in the Sprint Race.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GqCulx-WkAE ... name=large

The tires on the right are Piastri's, those on the left are Lando's, who was pressuring Oscar when they were called to the pits. Very different wear and degradation for such a small difference in strategy. Lando has been lucky, but it hasn't been just that.

Wow, the difference really is staggering. Looking at this without context you'd never guess which pair spent the whole stint in dirty air.

Lando has always been really good in tire management since 2021 I would say (perhaps even earlier in his career, but 2021 is when it was most obvious).

The guy is all-over the place this year and has been making a lot of mistakes on critical moments, but you got to give him credit when credit is due.

He's been a bit mistake prone in qualifying so far this year, granted it seems more and more like it's just the car being hard to extract the potential from in Q3, but IMO he is second to none in race pace and tire management at the moment.

[CjC]

[quote=CjC post_id=1282771

Yea. If it’s achievable Mclaren need to upgrade enough so the drivers can drive at 98% of the cars potential and still have enough pace to be on pole by a tenth and a half but that means they need to find 3 to 4 tenths more than the other teams upgrades- however I feel to achieve this amount it would take too much resource away from the 2026 development.

That does't work like that. Oscar and Lando are each others main competitors, so they'll have to use 100% of the car's potential to get pole, no matter how big advantage they would get over the other teams.
[/quote]

Yea because that’s a racing drivers instinct.
I was contemplating this yesterday, if Lando ‘settles’ for second and not over drive in quali, as he tends to have better race pace just do the business on a Sunday, other than in Australia Lando has had to come from too far back on the grid to show us his true race pace.
(In China Oscar was just plain faster)

[Watto]

People tend to go driver this and driver that overhyping Max again at the expense of our drivers and at the same time the car needs an update to fix that Q3 occuring problem and unlock that 100%. It happened in every single qualifying and too many times to be only the driver's fault.

Car needs to be better.

Drivers need to be better.

It's the point I've made since very early in the season, it isn't just one thing. Anyone point the finger squarely at the car or squarely at the drivers but it doesn't work like that.

I think that is pretty accurate, I think plenty even in pre season testing saw the McLaren was a little more on edge this year. Get it perfect and it's the fastest but a narrower window.


I think this is where Max and other multi WDC excel though somehow manage to excel -RBR have improved their car but I think his Suzuka pole in particular you could see he had to wrestle the car a little.

Both Oscar and Lando have improved this year and I think the 'weaknesses/errors' are pretty tiny but there, hopefully McLaren can improve the car too.

[mwillems]

Oscar was killing his tyres for sure, but I think he had some sort of incident on S3 and this is why Lando was on the back of him, not because he'd suddenly slowed down.

[AR3-GP]

Oscar was killing his tyres for sure, but I think he had some sort of incident on S3 and this is why Lando was on the back of him, not because he'd suddenly slowed down.


https://i.ibb.co/fYcKCNBV/OscarLap.png

This is the lap that Oscar pitted. He never had 5+ seconds over Lando. Gap was 2 seconds at most. Lando closed it down when Oscars front right perished.

[mwillems]

Oscar was killing his tyres for sure, but I think he had some sort of incident on S3 and this is why Lando was on the back of him, not because he'd suddenly slowed down.


https://i.ibb.co/fYcKCNBV/OscarLap.png

This is the lap that Oscar pitted. He never had 5+ seconds over Lando. Gap was 2 seconds at most. Lando closed it down when Oscars front right perished.

Very true, I ignored the pit in was lap -1 to the actual stop.

[Ben1980]

At most there was a 3 second gap, but then you can see it gradually and then quickly coming down to half a second. When Piastri skipped the chicane it could have been closer.

It was a bit lando from last year, when you watch the gap just keep shrinking.

[mwillems]

At most there was a 3 second gap, but then you can see it gradually and then quickly coming down to half a second. When Piastri skipped the chicane it could have been closer.

It was a bit lando from last year, when you watch the gap just keep shrinking.

It was a second a lap by lap 12, not even gradual. Tyres just got killed. But their laptimes before weren't that different. I'd like to see the other cars tyres to see if Lando was that good or Oscar that bad.

[Slahinki]

Having looked at the source of the tire photo and video of the pit stops (5:01 in the sprint highlights on youtube), the right most worn stack of tires is actually Lando's. So either he got into the slicktermediate phase of the inter, or Oscar was somehow slower on rubber in even better condition than Lando.

[mwillems]

Having looked at the source of the tire photo and video of the pit stops (5:01 in the sprint highlights on youtube), the right most worn stack of tires is actually Lando's. So either he got into the slicktermediate phase of the inter, or Oscar was somehow slower on rubber in even better condition than Lando.

Interesting. So in fact, it's nothing to do with tyre life, but that really he should have killed them. Perhaps that explains what I mentioned earlier, that Oscar was not trying to find the wet patches but Lando was, as he'd got his tyres where he needed them and was trying to make sure they didn't just melt.

None the less, it's that experience that helps you find the time to close the gap. You'd think Oscars race engineer would tell him this, if he didn't know.

[AR3-GP]

Having looked at the source of the tire photo and video of the pit stops (5:01 in the sprint highlights on youtube), the right most worn stack of tires is actually Lando's. So either he got into the slicktermediate phase of the inter, or Oscar was somehow slower on rubber in even better condition than Lando.

Interesting. So in fact, it's nothing to do with tyre life, but that really he should have killed them. Perhaps that explains what I mentioned earlier, that Oscar was not trying to find the wet patches but Lando was, as he'd got his tyres where he needed them and was trying to make sure they didn't just melt.

None the less, it's that experience that helps you find the time to close the gap. You'd think Oscars race engineer would tell him this, if he didn't know.

Lando drove an extra lap on a bone dry racing line (Tsunoda and Hamilton had already been circulating and setting purple sectors for 2 laps). That alone could explain the sudden deterioration of that right front tire. I have no doubt that Lando had tires in better condition and that's why he closed the gap.

[mwillems]

Lando cooling his tyres on that lap and Oscar not offers some contradiction of that theory.

[AR3-GP]

Lando cooling his tyres on that lap and Oscar not offers some contradiction of that theory.

Don't think we're talking about the same thing. Lando drove another lap after Oscar pitted. Oscar wouldn't be looking for wet patches on slicks and furthermore, just because Lando drove down a wet patch on the straight doesn't mean the tires didn't get damaged in T5-T6-T7-T8 which is where the high speed corners that do the most damage are. He used the dry line in the corners which is what damages tires.