F1 Preview: Why the Heat Is Squarely on McLaren to Repeat

Yahoo

11-02-2025

McLaren ended a 26-year wait for the F1 Constructors' Championship in 2024 as both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri claimed breakthrough victories. Now the target must be to go one better.
Autoweek takes a preseason looks at the defending Formula 1 champions:Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will make up one of just two unchanged driver lineups (Aston Martin is the other) at a team in 2025.
Both drivers have spent their entire Formula 1 racing careers at McLaren, with Norris entering his seventh season, and Piastri (pictured) about to tackle his third campaign.McLaren does not have a nominated reserve but its relationship with Mercedes means it has had its reserve drivers as back-ups if required – which could include Valtteri Bottas. IndyCar front—runner Pato O'Ward (pictured), who has tested for the team several times, is also an option on non-clashing weekends.The understated Andrea Stella remains as team principal for a third season, having calmly led McLaren to the crown last year. The gregarious American Zak Brown is the overall CEO.McLaren had to readjust to being at the sharp end of the grid week in, week out, and on occasion it squandered opportunities, taking time to realize the competitiveness of its package.
Entering as reigning champions means it now has a target on its back so that brings a different level of expectation. It needs to be a little bit sharper and reactive on the pit wall, and has recruited Will Courteney from Red Bull to ease the load on Randy Singh, but he is not currently due to be available until 2026.
In terms of car performance McLaren still has to solve its performance deficit at circuits with slow corners and low track temperatures, as best witnessed in Las Vegas last season.Both drivers are strong but still have the capacity to unearth gains. Norris' first-lap woes were regular and costly, and when the title fight got a little bit spicier he was wrong-footed by Verstappen at critical junctures.
There were also major wobbles of self-belief, with Norris his own biggest critic, and he and McLaren need to work on that. While Piastri's one-lap deficit was often consistently small he out-qualified his team-mate just four times in 24 Grands Prix, giving him too much to do on Sundays.
Piastri is an understated and placid figure and it is easy to forget he is only about to embark on his third season, but last year a strong mid-season was bookended by a slightly underwhelming start and finish, so tidying up those rough edges will yield the desired dividends.McLaren's rise from also-rans to world champions was so rapid that it took the team by surprise, with Zak Brown (pictured) in early 2023 having initially looked at 2025 as its first likely chance to contend for overall honors.
Consequently last season was a spectacular bonus—but that quickly raises expectations. Anything less than another Constructors' title will now be a disappointment, while for Norris and Piastri they will be eyeing up the Drivers' crown, so McLaren has to manage that relationship as well, which simmered at a few flash points last year but never spilled over.
It's a different kind of pressure to a few years ago (and a much nicer pressure!) but the team can't afford to take its new-found success for granted. As the only front-running team not to change its lineup across the offseason it also has the opportunity to hit the ground running.It's only two years since McLaren started a season struggling to score points, so to quip that failing to win a title would be a failure shows how quickly they have surged to the top, and how expectations have been raised.
But after the highs of 2024, retaining its crown, and taking the Drivers' championship, have to be the ambitions.