2025 McLaren F1 Team

[mwillems]

This baffles me. Mclaren were hugely aggressive in the undercut, stupidly aggressive. I wasn't a bad idea but executed too early.

I think this is being said because of turn 1, but so far Oscar has been very robust with Max, up until yesterday, using his own aggressive tactics against him.

[venkyhere]

After going through this thread, I don't know why everyone is slamming Piastri - it's been 1/7 races where he has been 'caught napping' and not being clever with his tyres (could have held station at something like +2.5s behind Max, looked after his tyres, and then simply 'reacted' to him for pitstops). Australia was just unfortunate due to the weather. Make no mistake Piastri is a vastly improved driver from 2024, he has worked on his craft, and has already gotten into the head of Norris. McLaren have two "proper" #1 drivers in 2025. He still has a 'gap' to Norris in terms of tyre management. I genuinely hope this thread doesn't become the Tifosi thread where knee-jerk reactions are the norm.

[venkyhere]

What do the phrases 'dominant car' / 'best of the current grid' / 'excellent car' / 'championship winning car' etc mean ?
- the car standing on stilts in the garage, without tyres ?

Every bit of engineering invested into a car has a single objective - making the tyres attached to it, go quickly on the track. Tyre life / management isn't something 'removed' from the performance of a race car. MCL39 is an absolute beauty of a car. Stop underselling the car. The Redbull 'matched' the McLarens in 3 (Japan, Saudi, Imola) out of 7 races, and severely lagged behind in the other 4. The Mercedes has never matched the McLaren. Ferrari are way behind. The only car that is consistently 'front row' , consistently podium finishing, is the MCL39. The Redbull is not a bad car, it's definitely good, but it isn't consistent. It has weaknesses. The MCL39 doesn't have any 'noticeable' weakness so far in this season. It is indeed a title winning car. Let that sink in.

I never said it wasn't a title winning car but enough with all this narrative every time Max wins. The reason Mclaren has a consistent podium finish is because it has two fantastic drivers and are actually running with two cars instead of one. The car has an obvious weakness as both drivers mentioned it so many times. It is twitchy the moment you try to drive it on the limit and it needs special conditions for it to perform at maximum. In Bahrain, China and Miami these very hot conditions happened and nowhere else. Everywhere else we saw a difference on half a tenth in qualifying and barely a tenth on race pace. After all since we want to talk about domination compare Oscar to Lando. 4 wins with the same car compared to Lando and that shows to me it's not just the car. When Oscar forced Max into a mistake in Australia in the rain where all cars are equal it definitely wasn't the car. What about Miami when Oscar forced Max make another mistake. The car can't teach you that. What about Saudi Arabia where Oscar passed Max from the dirty line at the start. Was it the car again? Half of these races happened in rainy conditions where all cars are equal and I didn't see our drivers lacking talent against Max. It is about time to accept that Oscar perhaps is a better driver than what people think he is and to be honest I am getting tired of arguing. The same thing happened after Japan and look how that turned out with Oscar making back to back victories gaining 29 more points from Max.

(bold text above) - how do you think the Redbull has been, in this entire ground effect era ? or the Ferrari in the first half of 2022 ? Wake up. The fastest cars are always the ones on a knife's edge. That's because ground effect aero is super sensitive to body-movements of the car, much more so than in any other regulation set , particularly so when the car is running super-close to the ground (and the fastest cars often do run super close to the ground). It requires a certain amount of re-adapted skill, to drive a fast GE car, fast. Otherwise you can have a 'nice and predictable' GE car like the Alpine or Haas, but it won't be quickest. Driving 'on the limit' is the whole point of F1 driver skill.

And as for the driver debate of Oscar & Lando v/s Max :
Please get out of the mindset that both Mclaren drivers are 'equal'/'better' w.r.t Max. They aren't. There isn't a huge 'gap' (all three have to be elite drivers to compete for podiums, someone like Mazepin/Latifi wont get to the podium driving the Mclaren/Redbull) but there is indeed a 'gap' in the skill level. No one is claiming Max is the perfect mistake free driver - as you yourself pointed out, we saw him make mistakes with braking in Australia/Miami etc when pressured from behind with a faster car with stronger tyres - he tried going above 100% and paid the price. But that's not the whole point at all. The point is, he can 'make the car count' when he has a 0.1s car advantage. The McLaren drivers, they need a car with atleast 0.4s car advantage, to have the same effect. I don't want to turn this into a full blown facebook-style driver debate, but at some point, truth has to be said. Everyone in the serious-F1-follower world, has already accepted the truth - he maybe a repulsive and arrogant person, but he is genuinely one of the all time greats. Don't allow the 'hatred' you have (nothing wrong with that, everyone is entitled to their opinion) for a driver, not see how generationally good he is with his skill.

Over and out.

[mwillems]

Some of the comparisons about what the Mclaren should or should not have done are using RBs Max Verstappen as a baseline. This is in.my view an inherently flawed concept.

Max is one of the best f1 drivers.. of all time.

Measuring our own drivers with that expectation is unrealistic. If this was really the reality you'd have an all time top 5 drivers list with hundreds of names.

[Lazy]

This baffles me. Mclaren were hugely aggressive in the undercut, stupidly aggressive. I wasn't a bad idea but executed too early.

I think this is being said because of turn 1, but so far Oscar has been very robust with Max, up until yesterday, using his own aggressive tactics against him.

I think the point was that Oscar had cooked his tyres and had to stop, it wasn't purely a tactical choice.

[avantman]

This baffles me. Mclaren were hugely aggressive in the undercut, stupidly aggressive. I wasn't a bad idea but executed too early.

I think this is being said because of turn 1, but so far Oscar has been very robust with Max, up until yesterday, using his own aggressive tactics against him.

I think the point was that Oscar had cooked his tyres and had to stop, it wasn't purely a tactical choice.

It's quite clear they went for it thinking or at very least hoping Red bull would react with Max, because there was quite a big window ahead of Oscar for Max to fit in. It wasn't completely unreasonable to think Red bull would call Max in as well. Then Mclaren would've kept Lando for as long as they could on 1 stopper also hoping for VSC or SC to get to the lead. They couldn't have known at that moment in time Max looked after his tires that much better than Oscar, and they had a strong reason to think Max wouldn't be capable of doing that, given the previous races.
At least Mclaren tried something, if they didn't try an undercut that would equal hanging out a white flag at that point already.

[Macklaren]

What do the phrases 'dominant car' / 'best of the current grid' / 'excellent car' / 'championship winning car' etc mean ?
- the car standing on stilts in the garage, without tyres ?

Every bit of engineering invested into a car has a single objective - making the tyres attached to it, go quickly on the track. Tyre life / management isn't something 'removed' from the performance of a race car. MCL39 is an absolute beauty of a car. Stop underselling the car. The Redbull 'matched' the McLarens in 3 (Japan, Saudi, Imola) out of 7 races, and severely lagged behind in the other 4. The Mercedes has never matched the McLaren. Ferrari are way behind. The only car that is consistently 'front row' , consistently podium finishing, is the MCL39. The Redbull is not a bad car, it's definitely good, but it isn't consistent. It has weaknesses. The MCL39 doesn't have any 'noticeable' weakness so far in this season. It is indeed a title winning car. Let that sink in.

I never said it wasn't a title winning car but enough with all this narrative every time Max wins. The reason Mclaren has a consistent podium finish is because it has two fantastic drivers and are actually running with two cars instead of one. The car has an obvious weakness as both drivers mentioned it so many times. It is twitchy the moment you try to drive it on the limit and it needs special conditions for it to perform at maximum. In Bahrain, China and Miami these very hot conditions happened and nowhere else. Everywhere else we saw a difference on half a tenth in qualifying and barely a tenth on race pace. After all since we want to talk about domination compare Oscar to Lando. 4 wins with the same car compared to Lando and that shows to me it's not just the car. When Oscar forced Max into a mistake in Australia in the rain where all cars are equal it definitely wasn't the car. What about Miami when Oscar forced Max make another mistake. The car can't teach you that. What about Saudi Arabia where Oscar passed Max from the dirty line at the start. Was it the car again? Half of these races happened in rainy conditions where all cars are equal and I didn't see our drivers lacking talent against Max. It is about time to accept that Oscar perhaps is a better driver than what people think he is and to be honest I am getting tired of arguing. The same thing happened after Japan and look how that turned out with Oscar making back to back victories gaining 29 more points from Max.

(bold text above) - how do you think the Redbull has been, in this entire ground effect era ? or the Ferrari in the first half of 2022 ? Wake up. The fastest cars are always the ones on a knife's edge. That's because ground effect aero is super sensitive to body-movements of the car, much more so than in any other regulation set , particularly so when the car is running super-close to the ground (and the fastest cars often do run super close to the ground). It requires a certain amount of re-adapted skill, to drive a fast GE car, fast. Otherwise you can have a 'nice and predictable' GE car like the Alpine or Haas, but it won't be quickest. Driving 'on the limit' is the whole point of F1 driver skill.

And as for the driver debate of Oscar & Lando v/s Max :
Please get out of the mindset that both Mclaren drivers are 'equal'/'better' w.r.t Max. They aren't. There isn't a huge 'gap' (all three have to be elite drivers to compete for podiums, someone like Mazepin/Latifi wont get to the podium driving the Mclaren/Redbull) but there is indeed a 'gap' in the skill level. No one is claiming Max is the perfect mistake free driver - as you yourself pointed out, we saw him make mistakes with braking in Australia/Miami etc when pressured from behind with a faster car with stronger tyres - he tried going above 100% and paid the price. But that's not the whole point at all. The point is, he can 'make the car count' when he has a 0.1s car advantage. The McLaren drivers, they need a car with atleast 0.4s car advantage, to have the same effect. I don't want to turn this into a full blown facebook-style driver debate, but at some point, truth has to be said. Everyone in the serious-F1-follower world, has already accepted the truth - he maybe a repulsive and arrogant person, but he is genuinely one of the all time greats. Don't allow the 'hatred' you have (nothing wrong with that, everyone is entitled to their opinion) for a driver, not see how generationally good he is with his skill.

Over and out.

This "gap" you speak of is largely down to experience and that Max has been driving a winning car for 8 years vs. the McLaren drivers at 1.5 years. I'm not saying that Max is not in the discussion for top 10 of all time but I think so will NOR/PIA

[mwillems]

This baffles me. Mclaren were hugely aggressive in the undercut, stupidly aggressive. I wasn't a bad idea but executed too early.

I think this is being said because of turn 1, but so far Oscar has been very robust with Max, up until yesterday, using his own aggressive tactics against him.

I think the point was that Oscar had cooked his tyres and had to stop, it wasn't purely a tactical choice.

It's quite clear they went for it thinking or at very least hoping Red bull would react with Max, because there was quite a big window ahead of Oscar for Max to fit in. It wasn't completely unreasonable to think Red bull would call Max in as well. Then Mclaren would've kept Lando for as long as they could on 1 stopper also hoping for VSC or SC to get to the lead. They couldn't have known at that moment in time Max looked after his tires that much better than Oscar, and they had a strong reason to think Max wouldn't be capable of doing that, given the previous races.
At least Mclaren tried something, if they didn't try an undercut that would equal hanging out a white flag at that point already.

I don't think that was it entirely. It's an external assumption that Oscar couldn't continue on those tyres or bring them back into a working condition because he said his tyres are struggling. I've heard this a thousand times and seen drivers continue on fine. His lap before pitting was only about a tenth off Max, after a couple of poorer laps at nearly half a second off. Feels to me very much like they just pulled the trigger a bit too early.

Even then, he lost more time in traffic anyway, so from a strategic perspective it didn't work out very clever.

My point previously is that trying it was fine, but stay out to make the delta bigger between Oscar and the inevitable traffic. As it was, the delta wasn't optimal between new hards and those mediums for the strategy they wanted to try. Tons of drivers were in dirty air - more so than Oscar, the tyres weren't going off a cliff.

[selvam_e2002]

Afraid of taking point on each other benefit Max to 5th WDC...

[Macklaren]

Afraid of taking point on each other benefit Max to 5th WDC...

I would have no problem with that really. I want McLaren to win/be dominant

[Henri]

What do the phrases 'dominant car' / 'best of the current grid' / 'excellent car' / 'championship winning car' etc mean ?
- the car standing on stilts in the garage, without tyres ?

Every bit of engineering invested into a car has a single objective - making the tyres attached to it, go quickly on the track. Tyre life / management isn't something 'removed' from the performance of a race car. MCL39 is an absolute beauty of a car. Stop underselling the car. The Redbull 'matched' the McLarens in 3 (Japan, Saudi, Imola) out of 7 races, and severely lagged behind in the other 4. The Mercedes has never matched the McLaren. Ferrari are way behind. The only car that is consistently 'front row' , consistently podium finishing, is the MCL39. The Redbull is not a bad car, it's definitely good, but it isn't consistent. It has weaknesses. The MCL39 doesn't have any 'noticeable' weakness so far in this season. It is indeed a title winning car. Let that sink in.

I never said it wasn't a title winning car but enough with all this narrative every time Max wins. The reason Mclaren has a consistent podium finish is because it has two fantastic drivers and are actually running with two cars instead of one. The car has an obvious weakness as both drivers mentioned it so many times. It is twitchy the moment you try to drive it on the limit and it needs special conditions for it to perform at maximum. In Bahrain, China and Miami these very hot conditions happened and nowhere else. Everywhere else we saw a difference on half a tenth in qualifying and barely a tenth on race pace. After all since we want to talk about domination compare Oscar to Lando. 4 wins with the same car compared to Lando and that shows to me it's not just the car. When Oscar forced Max into a mistake in Australia in the rain where all cars are equal it definitely wasn't the car. What about Miami when Oscar forced Max make another mistake. The car can't teach you that. What about Saudi Arabia where Oscar passed Max from the dirty line at the start. Was it the car again? Half of these races happened in rainy conditions where all cars are equal and I didn't see our drivers lacking talent against Max. It is about time to accept that Oscar perhaps is a better driver than what people think he is and to be honest I am getting tired of arguing. The same thing happened after Japan and look how that turned out with Oscar making back to back victories gaining 29 more points from Max.

(bold text above) - how do you think the Redbull has been, in this entire ground effect era ? or the Ferrari in the first half of 2022 ? Wake up. The fastest cars are always the ones on a knife's edge. That's because ground effect aero is super sensitive to body-movements of the car, much more so than in any other regulation set , particularly so when the car is running super-close to the ground (and the fastest cars often do run super close to the ground). It requires a certain amount of re-adapted skill, to drive a fast GE car, fast. Otherwise you can have a 'nice and predictable' GE car like the Alpine or Haas, but it won't be quickest. Driving 'on the limit' is the whole point of F1 driver skill.

And as for the driver debate of Oscar & Lando v/s Max :
Please get out of the mindset that both Mclaren drivers are 'equal'/'better' w.r.t Max. They aren't. There isn't a huge 'gap' (all three have to be elite drivers to compete for podiums, someone like Mazepin/Latifi wont get to the podium driving the Mclaren/Redbull) but there is indeed a 'gap' in the skill level. No one is claiming Max is the perfect mistake free driver - as you yourself pointed out, we saw him make mistakes with braking in Australia/Miami etc when pressured from behind with a faster car with stronger tyres - he tried going above 100% and paid the price. But that's not the whole point at all. The point is, he can 'make the car count' when he has a 0.1s car advantage. The McLaren drivers, they need a car with atleast 0.4s car advantage, to have the same effect. I don't want to turn this into a full blown facebook-style driver debate, but at some point, truth has to be said. Everyone in the serious-F1-follower world, has already accepted the truth - he maybe a repulsive and arrogant person, but he is genuinely one of the all time greats. Don't allow the 'hatred' you have (nothing wrong with that, everyone is entitled to their opinion) for a driver, not see how generationally good he is with his skill.

Over and out.

Yeah the fastest cars are not easy to drive.. no offence to norris and piastri but the mcl39 is superior to the redbull

[bauc]

Monaco is all about qualifying, we must get into the first row this Saturday with both cars, otherwise the momentum could swing against us.

[Lazy]

I think the point was that Oscar had cooked his tyres and had to stop, it wasn't purely a tactical choice.

It's quite clear they went for it thinking or at very least hoping Red bull would react with Max, because there was quite a big window ahead of Oscar for Max to fit in. It wasn't completely unreasonable to think Red bull would call Max in as well. Then Mclaren would've kept Lando for as long as they could on 1 stopper also hoping for VSC or SC to get to the lead. They couldn't have known at that moment in time Max looked after his tires that much better than Oscar, and they had a strong reason to think Max wouldn't be capable of doing that, given the previous races.
At least Mclaren tried something, if they didn't try an undercut that would equal hanging out a white flag at that point already.

I don't think that was it entirely. It's an external assumption that Oscar couldn't continue on those tyres or bring them back into a working condition because he said his tyres are struggling. I've heard this a thousand times and seen drivers continue on fine. His lap before pitting was only about a tenth off Max, after a couple of poorer laps at nearly half a second off. Feels to me very much like they just pulled the trigger a bit too early.

Even then, he lost more time in traffic anyway, so from a strategic perspective it didn't work out very clever.

My point previously is that trying it was fine, but stay out to make the delta bigger between Oscar and the inevitable traffic. As it was, the delta wasn't optimal between new hards and those mediums for the strategy they wanted to try. Tons of drivers were in dirty air - more so than Oscar, the tyres weren't going off a cliff.

I'm sorry but no way did Oscar agree to that, incredibly counter intuitive and risky strategy unless his tyres were cooked.
He said his tyres were cooked and they were, so they changed the stratedgy.

[mwillems]

It's quite clear they went for it thinking or at very least hoping Red bull would react with Max, because there was quite a big window ahead of Oscar for Max to fit in. It wasn't completely unreasonable to think Red bull would call Max in as well. Then Mclaren would've kept Lando for as long as they could on 1 stopper also hoping for VSC or SC to get to the lead. They couldn't have known at that moment in time Max looked after his tires that much better than Oscar, and they had a strong reason to think Max wouldn't be capable of doing that, given the previous races.
At least Mclaren tried something, if they didn't try an undercut that would equal hanging out a white flag at that point already.

I don't think that was it entirely. It's an external assumption that Oscar couldn't continue on those tyres or bring them back into a working condition because he said his tyres are struggling. I've heard this a thousand times and seen drivers continue on fine. His lap before pitting was only about a tenth off Max, after a couple of poorer laps at nearly half a second off. Feels to me very much like they just pulled the trigger a bit too early.

Even then, he lost more time in traffic anyway, so from a strategic perspective it didn't work out very clever.

My point previously is that trying it was fine, but stay out to make the delta bigger between Oscar and the inevitable traffic. As it was, the delta wasn't optimal between new hards and those mediums for the strategy they wanted to try. Tons of drivers were in dirty air - more so than Oscar, the tyres weren't going off a cliff.

I'm sorry but no way did Oscar agree to that, incredibly counter intuitive and risky strategy unless his tyres were cooked.
He said his tyres were cooked and they were, so they changed the stratedgy.

He did question the strategy calls, specifically pitting early. Complaining about tyres doesn't mean pit now. There are many things that can be done about it.

https://www.planetf1.com/news/oscar-pia ... verstappen

[Darth-Piekus]

Something that I noticed with Max and that VSC. Max was 30 seconds in the lead from Piastri. Then we have the DNF of Ocon and the VSC is underway. Everyone has 30% less speed. When Max entered the pits to exploit that VSC he was 44 seconds from Piastri. How is that possible since everyone goes with the same speed. Were the time cards screwed. Is distance growing and shrinking during VSC? Was there a speed violation from Max? Can someone tell me how that works? I'm not insinuating anything by the way. Just curious to know what happened there.