Some like it hot. McLaren loves it.
After six rounds of the 2025 season, McLaren’s control of the championship is clear. It comfortably leads the teams title, and Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris run first and second in the individual standings.
The broadbrush explanation for the advantage has become clear over the opening two months of competition.
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The MCL39 is supremely good at managing tyre temperatures — hardly thrilling but absolutely crucial.
We see play out in the results. McLaren has won every grand prix but one and has been faster in every race, but in qualifying, when tyre management is almost completely unimportant, Max Verstappen has rocketed to half the pole positions.
Miami also underlined this advantage. The tropical climate there produced the hottest track temperature of the season so far, and McLaren enjoyed its biggest race-day advantage of the season.
The same was clear during the daytime practice sessions in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia before the cooler evening weather evened the field.
Even in chilly Melbourne, the first round of the season, it was clear when the field was running on the delicate and overheating-prone intermediate tyre on a drying track.
“I think in a way this is a little bit of a surprise for us as to how competitive the car is, but it’s a surprise in terms of the extent; it’s not a surprise in terms of the objectives,” team principal Andrea Stella said at the time.
“The car seems to have achieved some of the objectives that we gave ourselves.”
It’s foreboding for the sport as it moves to Europe for a long stint in the northern summer.
That’s the why.
But explaining the how is far more difficult.
It’s so difficult, in fact, that it’s become the latest front in a war of words between McLaren and the usurped Red Bull Racing.
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‘GENUINE’ ANIMOSITY BOILS OVER
The rivalry between McLaren and Red Bull Racing has been simmering for more than a year as Woking has completed its sensational rise from backmarker to title contender.
It’s most keenly felt between RBR team principal Christian Horner and McLaren CEO Zak Brown.
“Oh, it’s genuine,” Brown told the UK Telegraph earlier this season about the animosity between the two. “There’s no love lost there.
“I don’t like how he rolls, and no doubt he feels the same about me.
“But I think it’s good for the sport. You need different characters. You need these rivalries. Some are friendly, sporting rivalries. Some are a bit more vicious. It’s always been like that.”
Brown arguably fired first, being one of the loudest voices to argue Red Bull Racing breaching the cost cap in 2021, as discovered in 2022, constituted cheating.
He was also one of the key figures to call for more transparency from Red Bull during the initial investigation into accusations of inappropriate behaviour made by an employee against Horner. The allegations were later dismissed.
Further, Brown has been a constant critic of the rules that allow Red Bull to own two teams, arguing it confers an unfair sporting and political advantage to both.
It created fertile ground for an on-track rivalry this year as Red Bull Racing flails after losing its dominant position at the head of the sport.
Last year it lobbied hard against McLaren’s exploitation of the rules to create highly flexible bodywork. Eventually it resulted in the FIA asking McLaren to make small changes to its rear wing after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, though it did nothing to prevent the team from running away with the constructors championship.
McLaren hit back by accusing Red Bull Racing of having a device that could easily modify set-up from the cockpit even during parc fermé conditions. RBR was forced to admit the device existed, and though there was no evidence it was used outside the rules, it was also forced to modify the part.
Late in the season, as RBR grappled to understand why its car had become so uncompetitive relative to the McLaren, the team wondered accusatorily whether McLaren was injecting water into its tyres to better control temperatures.
Pirelli and the FIA investigated but found nothing untoward taking place, another strike against RBR.
Its attention then turned to the so-called ‘mini DRS’ during pre-season testing, and though the FIA moved to crack down on rear wing flexibility at the Chinese Grand Prix, it again proved a red herring in the search for McLaren’s advantage.
Now, with McLaren’s advantage larger than ever, a new culprit has emerged.
3 in a row! Piastri dominates in Miami | 03:27
BRAKES BECOME THE FOCUS
With McLaren’s strength managing tyre temperatures now clear, focus has turned to its rear brakes as a potential source of its advantage, particularly after it dominated in steamy Miami.
Speculation over the particular method of heat management went wild after Red Bull Racing reportedly came into possession of thermal images that showed unusual cool spots around the MCL39’s rear brake drums that were red-hot for other cars.
The FIA had reportedly already looked into the McLaren’s brake design at previous races given chatter among rivals, but The Race reported it conducted a more thorough investigation after Piastri and Norris thumped the field by close to 40 seconds in Florida.
It’s unclear whether this was a targeted check or part of the governing body’s routine “extensive physical inspections” conducted at random on one of top-10 finishers, the results of which are published ahead of the following grand prix.
Either way, with no notification of any problems after the race, presumably the car was found to conform with the regulations, otherwise it would have been referred to the stewards for a technical breach.
But it was amid the paddock mud-slinging that culminated in Miami that Brown went on the offensive again, this time using a prop as his opening argument.
TV cameras captured him drinking from a water bottle stickered with the words ‘TIRE WATER!’ during FP1.
“[The water bottle] was poking fun at a serious issue, which is teams have historically made allegations of other teams,” Brown said, per Autosport. “Most recently one team focuses on that strategy more than others.
“There’s a proper way to protest a team at the end of the race, and you have to make it formal, disclose where it comes from, put some money down.
“I think that process should be extended to all allegations to stop the frivolous allegations which are intended only to be a distraction.
“I think that would be a way to clean up the bogus allegations that happen in this sport, which are not very sporting.”
Horner doubled down on his team’s hole-poking approach.
“I’m not suggesting that there’s anything illegal on the car,” Horner said, per ESPN.
“Of course in Formula 1 there are always going to be questions that are raised … it’s inevitable when you’re running at the front.
“You always come under more scrutiny.
“McLaren have got the car to beat at the moment, that’s quite clear. They’re going to be tough to beat over the next few races.”
With the brakes avenue now looking closed, Horner’s words hint at the next avenue for exploration.
Norris gets testy after Miami Grand Prix | 02:16
RED BULL RACING PINS HOPE ON RULE CHANGES
Red Bull Racing has been keen to argue that the coming rule changes at the Spanish Grand Prix will peg back McLaren’s advantage.
The new ‘technical directive’ — as rule clarifications and reinterpretations are known — will reduce how much a front wing is allowed to flex when tested by the FIA, lowering the threshold from 15 millimetres to 10 millimetres.
This doesn’t mean front wings will stop flexing. They’re subjected to far more aerodynamic pressure on track than the FIA can apply in the garage. But it does mean it will be harder for teams to keep wings flexing to the degree they currently do.
Red Bull Racing had been one of the teams advocating for the change, having fallen behind in the game of flexible bodywork under these regulations. It had previously been a leader in the field.
Rob Marshall, widely reported to have been integral in RBR’s mastery of bodywork flexion, joined McLaren last January, another little shot fired in this private team-on-team duel.
But it wanted the changes to apply from the first race of the season, as was the case with similar changes to rear wings.
“It’s madness,” an incensed Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko told Auto Motor und Sport at the time. “Either the new rule applies from the start of the season or not at all.”
The delay is partly down to the FIA changing its mind in the off-season, having previously told teams it wouldn’t intervene.
But those who were already far down the road of development with flexing wings then reportedly lobbied hard to move the delay deep into the season, with Spain being round 9 of the championship, more than a third of the way through the campaign.
The long lead time means there’s scepticism the technical directive will have any effect. McLaren — and every other team — has had months of notice that their front wings will need to be changed.
Moreover, the upcoming triple-header is typically when teams will bring their first major upgrade package, meaning the effect of stiffening the wing will be incorporated into a broader package of changes.
Undoubtedly the technical directive will have some effect, but it would be surprising if it totally reset the battle at the front in the way some appear to be hoping.
Combined it looks likely to be another technical and political defeat for Red Bull Racing at McLaren’s hands.
How Piastri got Max to outbreak himself | 00:57
THERE’S NO SILVER BULLET
If all this focus on McLaren’s car and its secrets is destabilising the team, it isn’t showing, with team boss Stella ensuring Woking keeps a level head.
“Red Bull are very good at making fast cars, exceptionally good at driving fast cars and they are extremely good also in creating the narrative to their advantage,” he said in Miami, per Planet F1.
“They exploit every possible opportunity to stay in the competition, and some of these opportunities are to sometimes create the narrative like, ‘Oh, we are making miracles here, the others should win every single practice session and qualifying and race’.
“This is the narrative created by some of our competitors, which we read occasionally and then we change the page, and we focus on ourselves.”
Of course there’s more going on at Red Bull Racing than just making wild accusations, but you have to wonder whether the finger-pointing is indicative of a team that, in the final year of these rules, is struggling to come up with its own answers.
We already know the RB21 is the result of a development trajectory that has led to a dead end. The car has become cripplingly difficult to drive — just ask Sergio Pérez, Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda — and has shown little capacity to win a race when it doesn’t start from pole and lead at the end of the first lap.
Part of the performance troubleshooting process is to learn from rivals. That’s natural, and every team does it. Sometimes that leads to accusations of illegality. That’s normal too.
But to think McLaren’s advantage is predicated on one thing — on one tyre trick, on one bit of brake cooling magic, on one flex of its front wing — looks a lot like overreach by a team that’s more focused on its rival than on itself.
McLaren is winning because of all those things but also because it’s come up with a new suspension configuration that’s been crucial to managing the sensitive ground-effect aerodynamics.
In Miami it also appeared capable of running with less cooling open than other cars, which knocks on to it being able to run with more downforce, which means it’s able to take better care of its tyres.
Red Bull Racing’s solution will likewise be multifaceted.
Chief engineer Paul Monaghan said as much previewing the remained of the RB21’s upgrade schedule.
“It’s not Harry Potter time, touch it with the magic wand and all of a sudden we’re away and gone,” he said, per Autosport.
“It’s diligent, thorough engineering by clever people, and we’ll chip away.”
But as Brown said, sometimes the sport just needs a good vicious rivalry.