McLaren bizarre admission about their 2025 F1 car – In the cooler temperatures of Suzuka and with a new smooth resurfaced track, F1 fans were treated to a rare occasion where the drivers were pushing flat out for most of the Grand Prix. Surprisingly, McLaren were unable to demonstrate their incremental pace over Red Bull as Max Verstappen drove the perfect weekend claiming pole and his third win over the last seven races.
Prior to F1’s visit to Japan, the talk in the paddock was focused on around how far ahead of the field were McLaren. With wins in the first two Grand Prix of 2025 and a 1-2 in China, the Woking based team were riding high on the road to the land of the rising sun.
Lando Norris claimed after pre-season testing that McLaren had “no excuses” this year as they seek to build on their constructors’ championship success and admits the MCL39 is the quickest car in the current field.
Bizarre McLAren admission
Yet the dark clouds on Sunday in Suzuka were not just threatening rain, but that there appears a possibility McLaren are not as far ahead of the field and Red Bull in particular as the thought. Of course the defeat at the hands of Verstappen was due to sheer driving brilliance which saw the world champion claim pole position then an error free drive on Sunday saw the world champion return to the top of the podium for the first time this year.
The reason for Max’s success? McLaren team boss blamed it on the lack of tyre degradation from the new surface. “Certainly I would have preferred old-style Suzuka before the resurfacing, because, in a situation like that, we would have exploited the good qualities of our car,” said Andrea Stella. “But when the tyres behave so strong, we have no additional qualities because everyone has very low degradation.”
“No additional qualities”… seriously is this the state of affairs as McLaren sees their place in the F1 pecking order when there is no requirement to look after the tyres? On the face of it this appears to be a bizarre statement, yet behind the data the RB21 is not as bad as is made out and may in fact be closer to the McLaren than most people suspect.
The Suzuka circuit is not kind to F1 cars with a lack of pace and like Barcelona it is a good all round test for an F1 car with both high and slow speed corners. Whilst Max may have made the marginal difference between McLaren winning and losing, his RB21 must be in pretty good shape given it was even in the frame for a victory.
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Of course the hope for McLaren is that Suzuki’s was an outlier and come the heat of the desert this weekend in Bahrain, their competitors will once again eat their tyres and the papaya liveried cars will drive off into the distance. Yet the weekend of the Japanese Grand Prix demonstrated the much criticised RB21 will be stronger competition for McLaren across a panacea of tracks coming up than originally suspected.
The troubles in Australia and China with the Red Bull car cost Liam Lawson his job and even the newly promoted much more experienced Yuki Tsunoda admitted in Japan the car was trickier to drive than he expected. Of course those with limited knowledge of how the process of an F1 car design goes are clamouring that this is result of Red Bull losing their guru designer Adrian Newey.
Red Bull stand accused of building the quickest design for their car theoretically possible. Newey’s often cited position was similar to this, although he is credited with making the drivability of his cars a priority too. This is exactly how Red Bull are going about their racing this year, as they attempt to broaden the often described “narrow window” where the car is in its sweet spot.
Red Bull’s chief engineer Paul Monaghan believes too much is being made of the fact the RB21 is difficult to drive. “It’s easy to overstate that we’ve got a difficult car to drive,” he said in Japan. “I bet they’re all quite difficult. How twitchy your car is, or how nervous your car is, it’s relative.
Red Bull car now “25% fixed”
“I bet there are 18 other twitchy cars in this pit lane that all of us, myself probably the most, would find really quite difficult to drive. So you’re trying to get your car as balanced as you can make it.”
Red Bull made an enormous number of repeated changes to the setup of Verstappen’s car in the practice sessions in Japan, far more than would be the case for a team confident in their baseline of their setup. Veteran F1 writer John Noble claims, “The disconnect aero balance problems are not as bad as they were with the RB20, but senior figures suggest the squad has only made 25% of the progress that it wants to make on this front – so there is plenty of room for improvement.”
If Red Bull can push on and find the other 75% of the fix, McLaren’s current 2/10ths of a second advantage will quickly disappear. Verstappen appeared to confirm this with his comments in Suzuka when he said: “We know our limitations. So we just have to try and run against that limitation as much as we can.
“It’s still not fixed. This is hopefully going to be fixed soon, but I cannot give you a timeline on that. It’s just about trying to find that limit, which is really sensitive for us at the moment.”
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The RB21 is no bastard child of its predecessors and over the winter Red Bull have brought fixes to some of the 2024 cars capricious nature. In Monaco last year Verstappen could barely get a lap together as the RB20 suspension bounced him from kerb to kerb. In Suzuka the final chicane has a brutal kerb and this hold the key to a lot of lap time. In fact the way Max was able to drive the final corner was where most of his pole lap time advantage was gained.
Traction in the slow speed corners was also an issue for Red Bull last year, but the RB21 looked to be quick out of the hairpin and the chicane when compared to its McLaren rival. Further, the brakes on the RB21 look to be excellent, allowing the drivers to brake as late as possible before rotating the car through the corner. It seems the team is happy with the trade off which means this at times induces some understeer on exit, but again a driver with sublime feel of his car can correct this as he balances it with getting on the power.
The reality of the challenge for Red Bull was expressed by Paul Monaghan when he suggests there are more improvements they can make to the balance of the car: “If we’re two tenths off on a 5.5-kilometre circuit with 20-something corners, if we find a few hundredths in each corner, all of a sudden we’re on the pace of the current lead car.”
This optimism for some may be well overstated, but there’s a confidence in the Red Bull campo following Japan that appears to suggest the team is on the up again. Red Bull are desperate to hang onto McLaren’s coat tails with the hope that the ban on flexi front wings down the line will significantly affect their rivals.
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When flexi wings were introduced in 2024 by McLaren, the balance of the car immediately improved. Red Bull are hoping come Barcelona and the rule change, it will be McLaren who are searching for a balance in setup and meanwhile Red Bull’s hard work over the first eight race weekends will see them more in control of their car, whilst their rivals search for how to rebalance theirs.
Over the years. Red Bull have been the best of the teams in terms of in season development. Initially on the back foot in 2009, the team were nowhere at the start of the season, yet they recovered brilliantly to challenge Brawn GP and almost denied Jenson Button his world championship.
Stella’s apparent complacency may be endemic in the McLaren team, which believes their car is unbeatable as long as the degradation at a circuit is high. All things being equal a team with such a tyre advantage if it executes its weekend and race strategy properly should be difficult to beat. Yet the soft underbelly of McLaren, criticised last season, appears to remain. As yet there have been no tough choices for the team to make between its drivers during the races so far in 2025.
But as Max Verstappen continues to drive a wedge between the papaya coloured racers, the tensions will grow and drivers will become fraught if they feel their own team decisions are not going their way. Red Bull are a battle hardened ruthless racing machine, while McLaren are the nice guys, with two lovely drivers at the helm.
Stella and his crew must toughen up when the tough choices come down the line, because only one of their drivers can challenge Max Verstappen for the world championship across the course of 24 race weekends, but with one will it be?
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Donald Trump is shaking the foundations of the modern world economy as he slaps never before seen trade tariffs across the world. Friend and foes alike are in the cross hairs but it appears certain aspects of the calculations have been a finger in the air job with unexpected consequences.
The tariff will also affect Formula One and its operations and Haas Automation which owns the F1 team of the same name is already feeling the impact of the trump tariffs in an unexpected fashion.
Haas Automation is a machine tooling business which employs thousands of Americans across the USA providing classic manufacturing jobs Trump claims he wants to help increase. The steep tariffs on imports is having a “significant” impact on the American based business, but the direct effect on F1 will be much wider than a team owner in financial trouble…. 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.
