As it stands, its almost certain before race weekend nine of the 2025 Formula One season that McLaren are set to take their second consecutive constructor’s championship. They were trailing Red Bull Racing last season after the Emilia-Romagne Grand Prix by 114 points, yet the failure of Sergio Perez to score more than a few points most race weekends saw them overhaul the then world champions to beat them in Abu Dhabi by 73 points.
The nigh on 200 point turnaround from race eight was highly unusual, yet this season they are in an even stronger position already 177 points ahead of the. Milton Keynes based squad and with Yuki Tsunoda scrabbling for 1 or 2 points each weekend, there appears little hope of a revival for Red Bull on the team trophy front.
McLaren have been the dominant team this year, although with the drivers each winning races and taking points from each other, Oscar Piastri’s lead over Max Verstappen is a fragile 25 points. By this time each year, most teams have brought a major upgrade to their car, but McLaren have been playing it cautious not wanting to lose the current advantage they have over the rest of the field.
Red Bull big upgrade in Imola
Red Bull brought their first big upgrade of the year to the Emilia-Romagne Grand Prix and its effect was startling. Yet Verstappen claimed the all important pole by fractions of a second from Lando Norris but the effect of the modified car was only seen truly during the race.
Unlike in Japan where Max had to fight to the chequered flag to hold of his McLaren rival, in Imola he cruised away from the papaya liveried cars to lead by over 20 seconds at one point during the race. A late safety car put pay to that advantage, yet at the restart the Red Bull driver was again able to cruise away from the McLaren’s to win by more than six seconds.
The true improvement in the RB21 will only become known this coming weekend in Barcelona. After Imola came Monaco, a circuit which has not suited the Red Bull car for two year’s in a row now. Predictably the stiff suspension could not ride the slow speed corner kerbs as well as the Ferrari or the McLaren cars, but come Friday this weekend the real improvement in the performance of the RB21 from its Inmola upgrade will become evident.
Meanwhile, McLaren appeared afraid of doing a Ferrari in 2024, who looked competitive at the start of the year then early upgrades in the European season appeared to slow the Scuderia, only for them to return to form with six race weekends of the year remaining.
Eight more weeks before McLaren upgrade
McLaren did introduce a new floor at the fifth round in Saudi this year, yet mysteriously they fitted it only to Oscar Piastri’s car in free practice one and then Norris’ in FP2. But the floor was removed completely for qualifying and the race, presumably because the team felt it was not a genuine performance upgrade.
The Woking based team explained to assembled media in Jeddah that the new floor was merely an effort at collecting new data. Now AutoRacer is reporting whilst Red Bull are ‘scared’ of a big upgrade to the MCL39 in Austria, they are “not really convinced” by McLaren’s explanation of their underfloor experiment. They clearly think it was intended to improve performance, but didn’t work.
“We actually didn’t use it,” team principal Andreas Stella explained. “There’s nothing in the car that is of a new specification. Some of the things we declared, they were test items. We tested them in practice [but] we didn’t adopt them.”
The Austria upgrade is some weeks away as the race weekend comes at the end of July. Again this presents a team cautious of messing up their current advantage, although this softly softly approach may come back to haunt Stella and the team given the reputation Red Bull have for in season car development.
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Barcelona key moment in 2025 F1 season
Of course the Imola floor upgrade was not an improvement for the MCL39 as McLaren had hoped, otherwise it would have been fitted for the racer and potentially again in Monaco. The coming Spanish Grand Prix this weekend may prove a pivotal moment in the F1 2025 season as Red Bull will confirm whether their Imola upgrade is as substantial as it looked.
Barcelona is also a happy hunting ground for Max Verstappen, with the Dutch driver already racking up four victories there in his F1 career. Only in Austria and Mexico has Max won more races than at the Circuit de Catalunya, which is set to fall from the calendar after the 2026 season.
The FIA is also set to strengthen its enforcement of the flexing seen in certain teams front wings and this alone could reset the F1 pecking order. Red Bull insist McLaren have the most obvious flexible bodywork, whilst Stella has insisted the new FIA tests will have no effect on the MCL39.
Indeed the F1 track in Montmelo will tell us a huge amount about Red Bull’s new ability to manage its tyres, given the asphalt is abrasive, something which has given McLaren an advantage so far this year.
Pirelli have opted to bring their three hardest compounds to Barcelona in an attempt to mitigate the abrasive nature of the circuit’s surface. Verstappen will also take some comfort from his win in Japan earlier this year, where Pirelli again brought the hardest of their tyre compounds to a race where Max won.
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Once upon a time in Formula One land, Monaco was deemed the jewel in the crown venue for motor racing as the fifties Hollywood set along with European royalty graced the streets of the famous French Riviera principality.
And it will then been surprise to learn that the drivers with the most multiple victories all (but 2) come from an era before the turn of the millennium. Ayrton Senna with 6 wins tops the table, followed by Michael Schumacher and Graham Hill with 5 and behind them is Alain Prost with four victories in Monte Carlo.
Over the last quarter of a century, F1 in Monaco has lost its pizazz and is challenged Singapore in terms being a place of corporate attendance where deals outside of F1 are being done. The drivers of course love the history draped streets of of Monaco, yet the real challenge and excitement now comes on Saturdays, as the qualifying hour gets under way… 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.
