Damon Hill has given McLaren his vote of confidence in the upcoming race for the constructors’ 2025 Formula One title although a range of online bookmakers have Ferrari neck and neck with the Woking based team.
Having seen the MCL39 testing in Silverstone yesterday, 1996 F1 drivers’ champion Damon Hill took to Instagram with his prediction for this season. “World champions again!,” he wrote in response to the McLaren post. Hill drove for Brabham, Williams, Arrows and Jordan during his career but his finest hour came whilst driving the last of the Adrian Newey designed Williams before he left for McLaren in 1997.
McLaren ran their new F1 car in a camouflage livery in order to prevent the long lenses of the photographers employed by their competitors, revealing the contrast between last year’s car and this. However a number of the changes were obvious which identified the papaya liveried team cars were substantially different from their title winning MCL38.
McLaren new F1 suspension configuration
The front suspension whilst remaining of the pull rod variety, has lowered the upper wishbone point of contact with the chassis to increase the anti dive element of the car’s balance. Anti-dive systems are designed to keep the car from lowering under heavy braking this retaining a more level underfloor profile which improves the downforce produced under the floor of the car.
With the current ground effect cars this is crucial to ensure the air seal created under the floor is not broken is would be the case were the car to pitch forward and backwards under braking and acceleration.
McLaren have also modified the configuration of the rear suspension to compensate, ensuring that under acceleration the car squats as little as possible for the same reasons as the anti dive. Team boss Andreas Stella believes the new suspension geometry will give them greater pace on the longer stints, by minimising further tyre wear.
Having won the constructors’ title in 2024, McLaren have the least amount of aero testing time of the entire grid. The number of hours in the wind tunnel and the amount of computer fluid design are restricted on a handicap basis, with the team ahead at the end of the season receiving around 10% less than their nearest rival.
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Red Bull ideas in the new MCL39
They in turn receive less than the team placed in third place and so the handicap system continues awarding the most aero testing time to the team at the back of the grid. Yet despite this handicap, McLaren have created car car designed more consistent with a ‘revolution’ than an ‘evolution’ with a more oval shaped air intake, designed to cut down of the buffeting air coming from the driver’s helmet.
This also reduces the overall weight of the car, as the lower profile requiring a less hefty roll bar due to the lower centre of gravity. A number of the McLaren features look incredibly similar to certain aspects of the last ever Adrian Newey Red Bull RB20, leading to suspicions a number of team members from Milton Keynes have taken his secrets along with them now they are working for the world champions.
A close inspection of the rear bodywork surrounding the push rod suspension, reveals a small hole which blows cooling air from the side pods to the upper part of the diffuser, a solution used by Newey when designing his final Red Bull F1 car. Autosprint reports ex-Red Bull employees have taken Newey’s secrets to their new employer McLaren.
TJ13 criticised the McLaren F1 outfit last season for failing to back Lando Norris as their number one hope for the drivers’ championship over team mate Oscar Piastri. And again this year with Max Verstappen the clear number one at Red Bull, a similar decision from the Woking based team could affect either of their drivers winning the drivers championship this year.
Norris favourite, but Piastri makes bold assertions
Despite this, the bookies have Norris as a significant favourite over his team mate and should the British driver claim an early lead over his Aussie team mate, once again the team will be forced to consider an uncomfortable path forward.
Meanwhile Piastri is brimming with confidence having driven the all new MCL39 and claimed following the session: “I want to win the world championship this year,” said Piastri, who will start the year rescuing in front of his home crowd in Melbourne. Should he achieve his dream of being F1 champion driver in 2025 he will be the first Australian to do so since Alan Jones in 1980.
“We are starting on a clean slate and I do think that I can become world champion this year.“I do think that I can become world champion this year.” To ensure he is in with a shout of achieving his ambition, Piastri will need to ensure his team mate does not build a substantial lead over him during the early part of the season.
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“I feel like 12 months ago I was going into the season still with some weaknesses that I wasn’t particularly confident with. I think through last season I addressed them,” Oscar concluded. And the McLAren driver is correct in the analysis of his previous year’s performance as come the end of round seven at the Emilia-Romagne Grand Prix, Norris had racked up almost double the points of his team mate with 101 to the Australian’s 53.
Lando Norris too believes this will be his year and attempts to thrown of the ‘nice guy’ image he has developed in the media stating this time he will get his “elbows out.” He will need to dethrone the quadruple times world champion to do so, but body declares, “I don’t think you have to do anything special to try and beat Max.”
Norris and Verstappen’s famed on track battles last season first came to a head ate the Austrian Grand Prix. Norris in the quicker car found out the street wise Dutch driver knew exactly how to place his car on the track, to prevent Lando passing him to take the lead. In the closing stages of the race, the pair came together at the infamous turn three, with Max again blocking the McLaren driver but taking them both off track.
Norris was forced to retire, while Verstappen sought TLC in the pits continued and continued on to finish P6 despite receiving a time penalty form the stewards who found he was at fault for th coming together with the McLaren driver.
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Lando admits watching back ‘tough moments’
Speaking at Thursday’s launch of the MCL39, an excited Norris pledged to toughen himself up. at Silverstone, which he hopes will propel him to title glory, the British driver pledged to toughen up. “I need to get my elbows out (against Verstappen) and show I am not willing to give him any positions,” he said. “I also have to be a smart driver. You have to be smart to go up against Max.
“It is always a lot harder when you are in the car, rather than when you rewatch it, and when I saw some of the things I did last year, I was like, ‘What the hell have I done that for? And what an idiot’. But at the same time, I want to say that I don’t need to go out and just prove something to him. I don’t need to take any unnecessary risks and don’t need to go down trying necessarily. I just keep focusing on myself.”
Lando accepts that Verstappen is an aggressive driver and having tussled with him over the closing rounds of th season inn Austin and Mexico City, had no word of criticism for the world champion . His respect for the world champion was surprising to many paddock observers, but the British driver knows his mental approach needs to be different this year.
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Norris accepts he must toughen up
“I don’t think you have to do anything special to try and beat Max. He’s quick, he’s aggressive, he’s one of the best ever. The easy way is just going out and being a bit quicker than him and staying ahead. That’s the obvious plan. You’ve just got to be smart. That’s the answer to it all. You have to be smart and you have to position the car well and also think of the long game sometimes.”
Even though Red Bull have yet to reveal their hand with the RB21, the bookmakers have world champion Max Verstappen and Lando Norris neck and neck in their betting odds at 27% chance each of winning the drivers’ title. Charles Leclerc has a 22% chance of being the victor at the end of the season, while Piastri currently sits behind Lewis Hamilton in fourth (15%) with the Australian’s chances of victory just 10%.
This year’s race in Melbourne, Australia will the the 28th at the Albert Park venue and the 39th held down under, but no Australia F1 driver has ever won their home Grand Prix.
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New F1 movie set to air in June this year
In other McLaren news, Lando Norris addressed the upcoming Hollywood blockbuster F1 movie to be released in June this year. Currently the film is simply titled “F1”, echoing the classic motor racing movie staring James Garner and shot in 1967 and entitled just “Grand Prix.” Unlike the 1967 classic which included real life footage of Graham Hill, Jim Clarke, Jochen Rindt Jack Brabham and the soon to be departed Bruce McLaren, there are no genuine F1 competitors staring in the film as Brad Pitt and Jason Ildris respectively play the returning ‘old hand’ who educates the ‘young gun.’
The plot has overtones of the pool classic ‘The colour of money” where the ageing gambler Paul Newman makes a comeback to encourage his protege Vincent to take on the world on the pool table. In “F1” the movie, shot over the past two seasons, Pitt stars as former F1 champ “Sonny Hayes’, who is badgered to come out of retirement and race for the Apex F1 team.
Pitt, along with Idris, who plays rookie driver ‘Joshua Pearce’, have attended a score of F1 Grand Prix weekends over the past two years to shoot action footage in modified GP2 cars which will form the basis of the on track story. At present its uncertain how much of the movie will include the current F1 stars, but with Lewis Hamilton tasked with the executive producer role to ensure the film is as realistic as possible, there will be shots of the current F1 drivers from a fly on the wall camera angle which form part of the storyline.
At the unveiling of the new McLaren 20205 challenger, Lando Norris joked that while he may not seek the spotlight that such a movie will bring, he is intrigued to see what the end product will be and how he is portrayed.
Norris is in “F1”
“I think I’m in bits of it – I’m definitely not Hollywood,” Norris said with a smile on ITV’s This Morning when asked for his impressions of the latest big screen movie about motorsport. “I definitely want to stay out of Hollywood, I just like driving my car and going home in a way, but it’s amazing to work alongside some of the guys last year, to be behind the scenes and see the cameras and all of this.
“It’s nice to be a part of it, but I’m also excited to see what a Formula 1 movie is and what it’s going to be about, and seeing how it’s all got made over the last few years has been pretty special. So, yeah, been nice to be part of it – I’m definitely not an actor, definitely never will be, but I’ll always play those little scenes in the background, and you might see me here or there.”
Whether Norris is merely fly on the wall footage our has been given a minor part is unclear from his comments. Yet the pressure is on Pitt and movie director by Joseph Kosinski to deliver a Hollywood blockbuster about motor racing, where all others have failed before. The “Grand Prix” and “Le Mans” movies have over time achieved cult status , but in their time the box office receipts were modest at best, which is the reason the big studios rarely make movies on the topic of motor sport.
McLaren’s HUGE gamble on they 2025 car design
The 2025 Formula One season took its first baby steps from a relatively long winter. Yes Lewis Hamilton has been grabbing the headlines for the past couple of weeks with his testing in previous years Ferrari cars, but now McLaren have fired the starting gun as their challenger for 2025 hit the track.
It was a rainy day in Silverstone yet the camouflage style papaya livery of the MCL39 stood out from grey background as Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris took to the track for the first of their two ‘filming days.’
These days which are FIA approved, were intended for teams to record video footage for promotional purposes. Yet as everyone now knows, each team uses one of their allowance in February to shakedown the car since the pre-season testing days in Jerez were withdrawn for cost saving purposes…. READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
