Tag Archives: McLaren

It’s been a difficult start to the 2025 season for the Aston Martin Formula 1 team, and especially for Fernando Alonso.

The Spaniard crashed in the rain in Australia and then retired early in China with a brake issue. In Suzuka he logged 11^th – a respectable result given that all 20 cars finished and there was little passing – but this season still represents his worst opening three races since the McLaren-Honda days in 2017.

In Bahrain he will start in P13, although realistically he would have been 15^th at best had Esteban Ocon not crashed and Nico Hulkenberg been penalised for track limits. In addition the late penalty for the Sauber driver impacted Alex Albon, who would potentially have denied Alonso a slot in Q2.

At the end of the session Alonso said that the performance was “maximised” and thanked the team, acknowledging that 13^th was better than had been anticipated.

The team’s current form is far removed from 2023, when he was on the podium three times in the first three races.

“I won three times here,” he said when I asked about his session. “So yeah, to be P13 is not the result that I wish or I dreamed, but at the same time, we have to accept the situation and where we are in terms of pace.

“We didn’t show the pace the whole weekend, all the free practices have been difficult and so on.

“To be at the end P13 is probably the best we could, so happy for that, happy for the team that we still work on, even on the difficult times, we never give up and this kind of thing.

“Let’s see tomorrow in the race, but points could be close to us if we do a good tyre management, and a good strategy and all these kind of things.

“So we will do our best. It’s a challenging for sure race for us, with maybe not such a great pace, but taking care of the tyres, fast cars behind us, so I’m looking forward.”

He remains upbeat about the prospects of turning the situation around.

“It’s one of those seasons where the challenge is welcome. Today you try to do the best you can. You start P13 tomorrow. Maybe it was difficult to guess P13 this morning, as it is difficult to guess points tomorrow.

“But what if we achieve the points? It’s a small victory. For us, every step we can do, and every understanding of the car, improvement of the car.

“The team is working day and night here, especially and under these extreme conditions. And they are not giving up. I will not give up. And I will be the first to show that.”

Just making Q2 in Bahrain was a big challenge, and ultimately Alonso had little chance to make any further progress.

“It was that fine line that we didn’t know if Q2 was possible,” he said. “And we had three new set of softs available for qualifying, and we threw all three in Q1 because we were not sure that Q2 was in reach.

“So then eventually when you go into Q2 I only had scrubbed sets for Q2, that’s the downside of it. But as I said, we are not giving up.

“We show every practice, every qualifying, every race, that we are attacking, and we are aggressive on the strategy and on decisions, and we are looking forward some upgrades on the car, and some performance coming from the factory. And we encourage everyone to do their maximum.”

Alonso sat out FP1 for reserve driver Felipe Drugovich, and also missed some laps in FP2 with a steering issue. However he didn’t want to use a lack of track time as an excuse.

“It was not really that bad yesterday. We probably felt the car in the window ready, but on the first three races, probably the low-speed content was our weakness on the car, in the package.

“Bahrain is all about low-speed. So we expected a tough weekend, and unfortunately we confirmed it yesterday.”

Verstappen lies only a point behind leader Lando Norris after three race weekends

Max Verstappen’s victory in the Japanese GP gave his Red Bull Racing team a welcome boost and opened up the possibility that he could yet be a title contender this season.

Clearly Red Bull is going to have to improve the RB21 and make it consistently more competitive if Verstappen is really going to be in the fight.

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It says a lot that Suzuka was widely seen as an underdog win, not a phrase that has been attached to Verstappen very often in the past.

However, it was also applied to Ayrton Senna in 1993 when the Brazilian scored five victories with a McLaren powered by the Ford HB V8 against the otherwise dominant Alain Prost and Williams.

Senna won in the wet and at places like Monaco where his talent could make the difference, and Suzuka was a similar piece of opportunism by Verstappen.

What he does have going for him is the fact that Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will continue to take points off each other.

Thus if he can remain in touch and the car is improved over what is going to be a long season – with the switch to the 2026 car impacting everyone’s development path – he can’t be counted out. Not that a title challenge on his radar at the moment.

“Honestly, I don’t like to really think about that too much,” he says. “I’m just focussed on finding performance in the car.

“As soon as we are close to them or level, then I know that it’s going to be fine, but we are not there, and we first need to get to that point. Because otherwise there’s no point to even discuss a championship battle.”

It was back to reality in Bahrain on Friday as once again the Dutchman struggled to hone his car in FP2, having handed it to reserve driver Ayumu Iwasa for FP1.

Perhaps of more concern to Verstappen is that it could be a tough Sunday evening for the team, given what a big role tyres play in races at Sakhir.

“It will be more severe,” he noted on Thursday. “The first stint in Australia, we got destroyed, also with the overheating and deg in general. Same in China, I would say, to a certain extent, also in in Suzuka, but you can’t pass.

“Lando was closing up to me in the end of that first stint again, and I knew that was coming, and I was just driving to my own pace. But I think because the track temp dropped quite a bit on the day, that helped a bit.

“And here it’s going to be hot. Of course, we drive in the night, so we’ll cool down a little bit, but still hot, aggressive tarmac. So on paper, from what we’ve seen so far this season, that’s not let’s say ideal for us, compared to McLaren.

“But it’s up to us to try and find those improvements in the car or tyre behaviour, and just go from there.”

Suzuka was a timely boost for the team, and Verstappen’s cheeky suggestion that he would have dominated had he been driving a McLaren was a nice bit of gamesmanship. He is well aware that it won’t be easy to repeat that victory.

“I think actually having a win is great,” he said. “Everyone loves winning, but we’re also very aware that we still need to improve. That’s been the target from the start, but still, it’s better than being second or third coming out of that weekend.

“So we take it, we’re proud we maximised our performance there, the car was not easy to balance out, and we made it, let’s say, driveable. And on the Sunday, it was good enough to hang in there.”

He downplayed any impact on him personally: “I did get happy, of course, after qualifying, just because my weekend so far was super difficult, I didn’t feel comfortable.

“So then the relief was there in qualifying, and I was very happy on the Sunday, because I think as a team, we executed everything very well. The pit stop was not fantastic, but the rest was really well managed, also with GP [Gianpiero Lambiase], but it’s not as enjoyable as ’23 or whatever.”

The big weakness for red Bull at the moment is that the RB21 has a very small window in which it works effectively. Finding that sweet spot isn’t easy, especially as the team struggles to start weekends with a set-up that Verstappen likes, suggesting that there’s a correlation issue. So is that window even narrower than last year?

“No, I don’t think so, but it’s also not necessarily much bigger at the moment,” he admits. “So we need to definitely find more.

“Sometimes the balance is just a little bit better, and sometimes it’s been a bit more off. So far, most of the time it’s been off because it’s just super sensitive to little changes that we make.

“And then, of course, you try to work your way through the weekend to make sure that at least you get the right balance for qualifying.

“But practice is also there to sometimes test things. Of course, you want to be quick, and you want to do well, but sometimes also things need to be tested and understood.”

The W16 is a far more consistent performer than the three cars that preceded it

The Mercedes Formula 1 team has enjoyed a solid start to the 2025 season, with George Russell leading the chase of McLaren at the first two races.

He was also quick at Suzuka but lost out after a mistake in qualifying left him fifth on the grid, and again at the chequered flag.

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Crucially the team seems finally to have moved on from the “diva” characteristics of the past three years.

The W13, W14, and W15 were always a little hard to predict, and they didn’t always respond to new parts or setup changes as expected, often leaving the team in firefighting mode.

In contrast the W16 is proving to be much more user-friendly. Technical director James Allison has confirmed that it is generally doing what it is supposed to do.

“It’s reasonably tractable,” he said when I asked him in Bahrain about the end of the diva era. “If you look at us every session of every track this year, we’ve been in pretty much the same place and it’s been wet, dry, it’s been cold tracks, warmer tracks, rough asphalt, smooth asphalt. It’s been there or thereabouts.

“I think it means we spend more of our time making it quicker, and less of our time scratching our heads…”

It’s a pity that Mercedes is finally hitting its stride in the fourth and final season of the current regulations, as Allison concedes.

“The frustration is merely that we that we’ve done a poor job over the last three years,” he said. “And have got a position where, having made a big step forward, we’re still not quick enough. But the regs are the regs are the regs. Get on and deal with them.”

Allison agrees that it’s been a solid start to the season, with a consistent performance.

“We come back from every race weekend having plotted where we think we sit,” he said. “Just looking at sector times in quali and in race, and the gaps in quali are very, pretty steady.

“We’ve been to three tracks now, and the gap has been pretty much three-tenths to McLaren, two, if we’re feeling optimistic, much less to a Red Bull, sometimes us in front, sometimes a whisker behind, and generally us having the legs on the Ferrari.

“In the race, the gap has been reasonably small, at the last track we were only 10 or 12 seconds behind at the end of the race, but in Melbourne, much larger, and that is much more about whether the tyres are happy in the window or not.

“Because over a single lap on new rubber, you can get most of what you need to from them, but if you haven’t got them happy over a longer run, then it will tell and you can see the gap opening up to half a second, three quarters of a second. And this track will be a real test of that, because of its very degrading nature.”

So where is Mercedes losing out to McLaren?

“I think that no one knows that,” said Allison. “If we did, it’d be very easy to copy, wouldn’t it?

“I think you could take a reasonable stab at saying that their surface temperatures at the rear of the car are likely to be lower than the other teams, because their advantage is found most when you’re at a rear-limited track and where rear tyre temperatures are governing your pace.

“But it’s never one thing, and they would have done a good job across the board.”

Allison isn’t too hung up about the specific deficit to McLaren, as the team has its hands full racing Red Bull and Ferrari as well.

“I think it’s been more like two-tenths in one or two places,” he said of the gap. “You can normally easily win championships with a two-tenths lead. However, we don’t just fight the people who are winning the race.

“We fight those nearest to us, and the gaps are way smaller than that there, and we have to make sure that we can continue to put points over the Ferrari to make sure that we can beat Max in the Red Bull, and hopefully get closer to the McLarens, who’ve done a fine job with their car this year.”

Like all the teams Mercedes faces the challenge of how to allocate resources between the 2025 and 2026 projects.

“I think any team that has got a bit of common sense will still be putting a good chunk of their effort towards the future,” said Allison. “Because the 2026 rules are such a tear-up from these ones, and these ones have just got 21 races left to go, and then they’re done, done.

“So we’re trying to push as much as we can onto the car in this sort of first quarter, third of the year, and maybe we’ll have some bits after that, but a lot of effort is going into the future.

“Happily even without changing the geometry of the car, there’s still quite a lot of lap time just in fine setup work.”

He added: “We are certainly planning to bring a reasonable raft of stuff for Imola. But there’s some things this weekend as well, nothing as flash as a floor or as outwardly visible as a floor, but things that we’re interested in finding out how they perform.”

The number one point of discussion in Friday’s Formula 1 drivers’ briefing in Suzuka was not kerbs or run-off areas but the state of paddock toilet facilities around the world.

You may think that I’m pulling your chain but the subject really did emerge and was extended into a chat about showers.

There is a serious point here in that drivers always spend the build-up to a race hydrating, and they factor in a comfort break between parking their cars on the grid and going to the national anthem ceremony.

One driver told me this morning that “a shit can be worth two-tenths” but he might have been little optimistic in his calculations.

At most tracks they simply return to their own garages for their personal pitstop, but there are some venues where they have to venture out into the public part of the paddock and potentially join a queue to use temporary facilities, with Melbourne and Montreal among those highlighted.

The problem is that if they are late to the national anthem they potentially face a penalty, something that the FIA has highlighted, and thus any time lost could be very costly. Drivers also pointed out to the FIA how they can be delayed by being doorstepped for TV interviews.

They are keen for the FIA to log the WC issue and add better pit building facilities to the guidelines for new venues.

GPDA director George Russell also mentioned the lack of shower facilities at many tracks. At European events team hospitality units usually have showers for the use of drivers, but they are not common at flyaway venues, and especially at temporary circuits.

However Russell’s plea didn’t get much traction amongst his colleagues, with one of them suggesting that circuits should ensure that there is a hair dryer just for George’s use…

The issue of facilities is not a new one. Max Mosley once told me that in the early days of FOCA he and Bernie Ecclestone delegated the job of paddock toilet inspector to none other than Frank Williams.

An otherwise perfect Sunday for McLaren in China was spoiled by a brake issue that Lando Norris had to manage for the last part of the race.

The team came away with a welcome one-two result led by Oscar Piastri after a difficult sprint the previous day, but a long brake pedal for Norris created some tension.

Paradoxically at the same time the situation also made the team’s life easier in terms of any stress associated with allowing the two drivers to race, as it prevented Norris from being able to fight with Piastri.

Nevertheless team principal Andrea Stella made it clear that any sort of reliability issue was “not acceptable” in the context of the World Championship fight.

“We have been tense at the pitwall, and I’m sure the entire team and the fans, because we had one issue on Lando’s car with a brake pedal that we needed to manage over the last 20 laps,” said the Italian.

“Lando and the team did a very good job in being in the loop as to how to adapt the driving style to this kind of problem, which then got worse and worse through the race, and put the entire result at risk, which is obviously just not acceptable from a reliability point of view. We need to do better.

“And this will be one of the points that we will definitely re-emphasise to the entire team that has worked at an incredibly high level, but we cannot have issues that put these sort of results at risk.

He added: “The brake pedal was going long, and what we needed to do is we needed to avoid more and more the peak pressure.

“So he needed to brake with less and less and less peak pressure, to the point that over the final laps, he was just costing for a long time off the throttle, and then applying just a minimum amount of brake pressure to stop the car and go around the corner.”

Stella declined to elaborate on exactly what the root cause of the issue was.

“We understand what the problem is, which I don’t disclose for IP reasons, but fundamentally, it had to do with a leak in one of the components, not the brake line, but somewhere else.

“And the main action required was to limit the peak brake pressure, or like just you could brake, but very, very gently.

“So what was a 100 metre braking, now it became 200 metres, and towards the end, it was a 300 metres, because Lando needed to lift the throttle, cost to a certain speed and then apply very gentle brake pressure. That was to avoid that leak to become too fast.”

Lewis Hamilton says it’s “not the moment to throw the toys out of the pram” and insists that his Ferrari Formula 1 team should not be defined by its difficult race in Australia.

Hamilton qualified eighth in Melbourne, a place behind team mate Charles Leclerc. After a bad decision to stay on slicks cost both men a chance to make progress they finished eighth and 10^th, with the Monesgasque driver still ahead.

Hamilton has made no secret of the fact that he still has a lot of work to do as he learns about the team and the car.

“We’re just going to set the car up a bit different this weekend,” he said in Shanghai. “So to this point, I think I’m still having to witness and take a view and see how the team operates.

“I’m still learning, it’s the first weekend to see how they operate on a race weekend – it’s different to testing – how they like to set the car up, the changes they like to make during the weekends.”

He added: “I think as I get more and more comfortable and more knowledgeable about the car, I can start making more decisions, and say, actually, this is the setup change I want to go with.

“So already this weekend I’m having those discussions, and I’m going to lean a little bit more with adding my experience, hopefully there’s a bit more in it. But they’ve got a lot of experience already.

“And yep, it wasn’t the race that we wanted. It’s not the moment to throw the toys out of the pram. It is what it is. One small thing could have made a big difference in our result. But we move forwards.

“Everyone’s still motivated. You’ve got everyone here with their heads high, and I think that the energy is still good in the garage. We’re not going to be defined by that one race.”

Hamilton’s radio conversations with race engineer Ricardo Adami attracted a lot of comment in Australia after he asked several times to be left to it.

The pair are still discovering the most efficient way to communicate, and when I asked how that process is going Hamilton was keen to downplay the subject.

“Naturally, everyone overegged it,” he said. “It was literally just a back and forth. I was very polite in how I suggested it. I said, ‘leave it to me, please.’ I wasn’t saying ‘FU,’ I wasn’t swearing.

“And at that point I was really struggling with the car, and I needed full focus on these couple of things. We’re getting to know each other. He’s obviously had two champions or more in the past, and there’s no issues between us. Go and listen to the radio calls with others and their engineers – far worse, far worse.

“The conversations that Max has within engineer over the years, the abuse that the poor guy’s taken, and you never write about it, but you write about the smallest little discussion I have with mine. Ultimately we’re we’re literally just getting to know each other.

“So afterwards I’m like, ‘Hey, bro, I don’t need that bit of information. But if you want to give me this, this is the place I’d like to do it. This is how I’m feeling in the car and at these points, this is when I do and don’t need the information.’

“And it’s that’s what it’s about. There’s no issues, and it’s done with a smiley face. And we move forward.”

Oscar Piastri’s dream result of a win in the Formula 1 Australian GP slipped away on lap 44 of Sunday’s race, when his pursuit of McLaren team mate Lando Norris was ended by a sudden shower and a trip onto the Albert Park grass.

A recovery to ninth place and a couple of points was of little comfort given what he had lost, but nevertheless it was a strong weekend overall for the 23-year-old.

Norris may have been a step ahead for most of the time, but Piastri was right there throughout, and was especially strong in the race. It’s now in his hands to get in front and prove that he can be the team’s main title candidate.

“Oscar today was deserving to be in contention for the victory until the last moment,” said team boss Andrea Stella.

“And he drove exceptionally well. And when I use the verb driving, that’s not only driving the car around the track, but it’s also the kind of assessment of the conditions of the decisions that we should have taken.

“It was very lucid, very calm. And he is starting his year three in F1, but he looks like one of the most expert drivers that I worked with. So, extremely impressed by Oscar today, just a little bit unlucky.”

Piastri’s life was made harder by losing a spot to Max Verstappen at the start, but he was able to keep the pressure on the Dutchman, eventually pushing him into a rare mistake.

“The start was not amazing,” he said when I asked about his race. “I just got pinched on the inside a little bit, and I got overtaken, I think the pace was really strong until we pitted for slicks. I think Max obviously locked up a little bit and went wide, and I was able to show the pace I had.”

On lap 32, shortly after a mistake had cost him a couple of seconds, a radio message revealed that only now – with backmarkers out of the way – was he free to race Norris.

“We were holding position before that. I think by the time we were free to race, it kind of killed my front left a little bit getting to the back of Lando. So by that point, there wasn’t much I could do.

“I think today’s race and the circumstances were pretty extreme. We were approaching backmarkers, one dry line, not knowing if there’s going to be rain to come. I’ll speak to the team and try and understand better what the thinking was. I think it’s always clear that those calls can come in either direction.”

It was when the rain returned that things went from for Piastri. At the end of lap 44 both he and Norris went off towards the end of the lap, and while his team mate was able to scrabble back onto the track and dive into the pits Piastri was left stranded on the wet grass for what seemed like an age.

“I tried to push a bit too much, I guess. In those conditions, very difficult to judge just how slippery it’s going to be. I think from one lap to the next, it had really changed a lot. And I could see Lando going off in front of me, but I was also already in the corner, basically.

“So there wasn’t much I could do to slow myself down at that point. And then once you’re in the gravel and the grass, you obviously try to keep the car as straight as possible. And then obviously to get stuck in the grass like that was pretty unbelievable sat in the car, but I’ve only got myself to blame for being there, so it’s a shame.”

Eventually he managed to reverse back onto the escape road and get into the pits: “I was just trying to stay in the race. Tried to go forwards, and I couldn’t, so a good thing I spent some time in the off-season trying to learn how to reverse a tractor on Jeremy Clarkson’s farm, because I think it came in handy today. I was just trying to get myself back in the race.”

He was 13^th for the restart after the safety car, and was given a little help through being waved past to regain his lap – which helped to take the green with warm tyres.

“I knew that we had strong pace. I knew that I had strong pace. Even after the final restart it was frustrating. Ocon went wide or nearly lost the car at the last corner. So I went past just by driving normally, and then had to give the position back. So I lost three or four seconds doing that.

“And then given that I had to unlap myself, I had some pretty good temperature in the tyres, and was just able to capitalise on that, the car’s pace and my own confidence, I think. I’m glad that we at least got back to the points, but it should have been a lot more.”

He made it as far as ninth, pulling off a bold passing move on Lewis Hamilton right at the end. It was another sign that he means business this year.

“I think for essentially 56 laps of today’s race I was very proud of the job I did,” he said. “I feel like the pace was really strong, and obviously disappointed with the mistake I made.

“But I think that doesn’t take away completely from just how strong the whole week has been for not just the team, but for myself. I feel like I’ve done a good job all weekend. So I think it would be pessimistic of me to just write-off the whole weekend because of one mistake.”