There is no doubting who has the fastest car on the grid this season in Formula 1, with McLaren dominating proceedings from the moment the campaign began.
The British team have seen their drivers win 10 of the 13 races so far, and it would take a serious capitulation for anyone other than Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri to win the drivers’ championship.
With the McLaren drivers finishing P1 and P2 in the first two practice sessions of the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix, it seems that big points will be scored once again this weekend. As far as team principal Andrea Stella is concerned, though, this level of dominance is a surprise.
Andrea Stella explains McLaren development
The 10 teams were faced with some tough decisions to make after the 2024 season. With a host of regulation changes to consider for the 2026 season, some teams have opted not to focus too much effort on upgrading the 2025 car throughout the season.
As Stella explained in a press conference after FP1 in Hungary, McLaren opted to take the 2025 car very seriously.
“I’ve been surprised by this level of competitiveness,” Stella explained. “When last year we discussed how much effort we wanted to put in improving the 2024 car, we definitely wanted to be very ambitious.
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“We wanted to try and clear the ‘going into race weekends and you never know who’s going to win’ situation we had last year, and we thought we needed to do a little bit more than the normal development. So how do we do that? We embraced a very aggressive approach to innovation.”
“The MCL39 is a very innovative car. From an engineering point of view, we’ve been nervous as to whether, with some solutions, if we were actually in the condition to deliver them. But then when we looked at the lap times and the numbers in simulations, actually, we thought that wouldn’t be enough. At the start of the season, effectively it wasn’t enough,” Stella went on.
“So, there’s a factor that has happened during this season, which is the car has actually been upgraded. I think it was more noticeable in the past because we were coming with one-off upgrades, and they were in themselves very noticeable.
“But actually, even if we consider the last three, four races, there’s been quite a lot of new parts that have been added. If we add all these in a single incidence, then we would say, ‘Oh, McLaren has a big upgrade.’ So, I think this has helped a lot in creating this trend and finding that in the last three races, we were definitely very competitive.”
A developing title battle
Whilst McLaren may have nailed the car for the 2025 season, they must now focus on the developing title battle between their two young drivers. Heading into the Hungarian GP, there are only eight points between Piastri in first and Norris in second.
It seems inevitable that at some point soon, the McLaren pit wall will have to make on-track decisions that directly impact the outcome of the title. As far as Stella is concerned, the team’s job right now is just to put the best conditions in place for the two drivers to thrive.
“First of all, we need to make sure that we as a team only play a positive part, and the positive part is to give Lando and Oscar a fast car, a car that in all conditions can fight for the win,” Stella said.
“We don’t play a role instead in which we have reliability factors, operational problems, pit stops that may bias the allocation of points one way or the other. This is the responsibility of the team.”
As for what the drivers can do, Stella thinks consistency is key: “When it comes to Lando and Oscar, I think this is very much to do with the execution because they are very close, and it’s a matter of details in the execution from all points of view: race craft, driving, penalties, and then consistency.
Consistency, just being good at every single event, is something that Lando and Oscar have been very good at, but I think this is going to be more and more important, especially as the finish line gets closer and closer.”
