Formula 1: What has gone right for McLaren as they head to Belgian GP on top of drivers' and constructors' races?
The 2025 season has come up like a reward for long years of sweat and toil for McLaren. Ahead of the Belgian GP this weekend, the McLaren team is leading both the drivers' and constructors' standings. With both Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris at the top and both commanding over a 60-point lead over the dominant champion Max Verstappen, McLaren is starting to dream about its first champion since they had the modern-day great Lewis Hamilton in their stables in 2008.
With a commanding lead of over 200 points over Ferrari, which is placed a distant second in the constructors chart, McLaren looks well within reach to repeat the 2024 constructor's title win, which it won after a long two decades in 1998 when Mika Hakkinen successfully won the championship with active support from David Coulthard.
McLaren's dream run of 2025 isn't due to luck or a single innovation. It's the result of an amalgamation of a sweeping technical overhaul supported by strong leadership and trust in the sustained efforts of various team members. As former team owner Ron Dennis once said, 'You don't expect to be at the top of the mountain the day you start climbing.'
The team has been charting its way back to the top gradually since the fall from the top in the 2013 season.
Andrea Stella, who took over from Andreas Seidl as team principal in the 2023 season, has been with McLaren since 2015, prior to which he had worked with Ferrari and F1 legend Michael Schumacher. He has overhauled the team by bringing in Rob Marshall, ex-Red Bull honcho, who revamped the car architecture. Peter Prodromou, the veteran aerodynamicist, made improvements in the chassis and aerodynamics of the car. This gave the winning combination of the MCL39 car of 2025 with active support from the pool of young talent.
'It's not about shortcuts. It's about culture, science, and belief,' Stella once said. The belief is visible in the MCL39 car. There have been changes in the chassis design with reoriented suspension. Front and rear suspension redesign has also helped the MCL39 reduce wearing down of tires and helped stabilised the aerodynamic platform. Rob Marshall's architectural innovations have overhauled the diffuser and the cooling package of the car. Work was also done on the thermal management of the car with improvement on the airflow in the sidepods and engine cover. The McLaren team has also introduced advanced use of telemetry with AWS and Splunk, providing them with real-time simulation for tire prediction and aero modelling.
Behind the wheel, UK-born Lando Norris has been McLaren's consistent driver for the last seven years, while the Australian Piastri has been with the team since 2023 when he replaced fellow Australian Daniel Ricciardo. Both Norris and Piastri are technical, adaptable, and collaborative, which was absent in previous pairings of McLaren.The MCL39 initially suited Piastri's braking style, but Norris adapted to it by tweaking his technique, contributing to a stronger mid-season surge in performance. What's also important is that Piastri and Norris don't just coexist—they push each other to their limits, giving McLaren its desired results.
With nine constructors' titles, McLaren is only behind Ferrari in the all-time list, making it one of the most consistent teams. But the last decades have just seen the downfall of this glorious team. After Mika Häkkinen's retirement in 2001, McLaren struggled to maintain title-contending form with the Mercedes chassis issue of 2004.
Then came the 2007 Stepneygate Scandal, where McLaren was fined $100 million for possessing Ferrari technical data, and banned from the championship race.
2008 gave them a winner in Hamilton, but they lost to Ferrari in the Constructors race. Their real downfall started when the new chassis policy in the Mercedes engine was adopted, which resulted in the disastrous season of 2013-14.
But things turned worse from there, with the Honda Gp2 engine also facing public criticism from the drivers. The seasons of 2015-17 gave McLaren its worst finish since its origin. With another transition to Renault for three years, McLaren again returned to Mercedes in 2021 which has laid the foundation for the team to regain its long-lost glory.
McLaren is one of those teams that has supported raw talent, be it in the case of 1976 champion James Hunt or Niki Lauda, who later won with McLaren in 1984. Hamilton, who won the 2008 F1 title, was also a raw talent. Jenson Button, who won the F1 title with Brawn, was a McLaren find too. Same is the case of current drivers, Piastri and Norris, who helped McLaren win the 2024 constructors title, the first since 1998.
After the British Grand Prix 2025, the point difference between Piastri and Norris is eight points, and the intra-team rivalry is starting to emerge. Will this lead to a split between the winning pair, like we have seen throughout the history of McLaren in famous rivalries between Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna or the British pair of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton?
The performance of Norris and Piastri is getting compared with three-time Champion Senna and four-time champion Prost, who dominated the F1 for the decade with the McLaren team. With 12 races to go in the season, it is for these drivers to prove that they are worthy of this comparison.
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