How worried should F1 rivals be over McLaren’s Melbourne dominance?

For the first time in the hybrid era, McLaren travelled to Formula 1’s curtain raiser as the undisputed pre-season favourite. It came out of the Bahrain test leading our long-run calculations quite handsomely and, after Friday practice in Melbourne, rivals were also putting the papaya squad at least three tenths ahead.

Simulations and calculations are one thing, but on Saturday afternoon McLaren proved its rivals’ fears were justified. Last year’s title-winning constructor still found ways to innovate and iterate on its victorious design as Lando Norris took pole ahead of Oscar Piastri, crucially nearly four tenths ahead of Max Verstappen.

It led to reluctant comments from fourth-fastest George Russell, with the Mercedes driver claiming McLaren’s advantage was such that it could already focus its development efforts on the all-new 2026 rules.

McLaren’s race pace advantage was a lot murkier due to the challenging mixed-weather conditions. But, after being able to hang with the orange cars at the start of the race, Verstappen could not avoid slipping back after less than 10 laps. He eventually shipped almost 15 seconds before repeated incidents neutralised McLaren’s gap.

The world champion couldn’t believe his luck to finish second thanks to Piastri’s late spin as the rain returned, and he even threatened to snatch the win away from Norris in a nervy finale. But, while Red Bull team boss Christian Horner was “encouraged” by Red Bull’s pace towards the end of the race, looking at the bigger picture, there was one element of McLaren’s race-day performance that alarmed him.

PLUS: Did Red Bull blow its ‘Canada’ chance to hand Verstappen Norris’s Melbourne win?

“We were just a little heavier on the tyres, particularly in the last sector, so then that gap started to open,” Horner said. “And what’s quite strange is that they enjoy great warm-up, but also very low degradation. Usually, one comes at the expense of the other. Certainly at this circuit they seemed to have mastered that.”

To put this into numbers, race analysis from our technology partner Paceteq shows Norris was 0.69s per lap faster than Verstappen, on average, over the first stint on intermediates. At the midpoint of the stint, the world champion was losing up to 1.5s a lap. Mercedes and Ferrari faced similar struggles, averaging over a second per lap slower than McLaren.

It is one area that McLaren wanted to address for this year and, on the evidence of Melbourne, it has achieved it. “We saw that the car interacts with the tyres very well, because in the first stint we were able to open a gap to the other cars, which I don’t think is the car itself only,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said. “It’s also how gentle the car is on the tyres. It’s a little bit of a surprise for us as to how competitive the car is.”

But having witnessed first-hand how quickly the picture can change last year, when wholesale upgrades in Miami turned McLaren from a midfielder into a race winner, Norris dismissed Russell’s comments that his team can already take the foot off the throttle.

“I know George made some comments earlier this weekend that we can just turn our focus to 2026. If that’s their mentality, wonderful, but that’s not the mentality to have. Sorry, mate,” he said as Russell sat alongside him in the post-race press conference.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“We know we still have a lot of work to do on this year’s car. If you relax in this position, you fail. In Formula 1, if you start thinking things are good and groovy, that’s when you get caught.

“I do think we’re favourites because the team has done an amazing job, and the car is flying. But we will have races where we struggle.”

However, contrary to this time last year, when teams could only really focus on the current ruleset, squads will have to shift more and more resources to developing their car for the new regulations of 2026, so the window to catch McLaren will be closing fast – by the summer at the latest.

A lot will also depend on how McLaren and its drivers execute difficult races, having had a few wobbles last year in Canada and Silverstone in equally challenging conditions. Leading from the front at Albert Park in changeable weather, the team had nothing to gain but everything to lose, which goes some way towards explaining why Piastri was asked to hold station for the first half of the race. The Australian’s late spin prevented McLaren from taking maximum points, but the fact that the squad nailed its strategy and race operation suggests it has made another step off-track as well.

“We got it wrong a lot last year, so I guess we learned from our mistakes,” Norris added. “Last year, we would have done the same race and we wouldn’t have won because we were not the best at making those decisions. Today we were. I give a lot of credit because they worked hard over the winter, so they were ready for a day like today. We were very decisive.”

There is still hope for neutrals or supporters of rival teams, who had been hoping 2025 would be as close as advertised. Melbourne form isn’t always representative of the rest of the calendar, and Ferrari made such a meal of its weekend that we haven’t seen the Scuderia’s true performance.

But, if you are in the papaya camp, you are going to get on the plane to China feeling pretty, pretty good.