Mind games or accepting a tough reality? What’s behind Russell’s McLaren most dominant claims

Formula 1 has picked off in Shanghai where it left off in Melbourne – with McLaren’s rivals wondering just how far they are behind the championship’s leading car.

The wet race in Australia – wild and wonderful though it was – actually made the formbook harder to read.

Ferrari never got a chance to show if it could recover from its poor qualifying and while Max Verstappen hauled Red Bull to a near victory, he needed the race’s second safety car to get back into contention.

Some paddock sources suggested to Autosport in Shanghai that McLaren’s margin of victory could’ve been as high as 30s had the Melbourne race day been dry.

If accurate, such a gap would only have intensified the spotlight on how Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri might compete for a two-horse title.

Enter Mercedes driver George Russell. He made headlines last weekend by claiming McLaren currently has “such an advantage” that “they can stop development now and go fully on 2026”.

Then, on Thursday in sunny, smog-less Shanghai, Russell doubled down on his position – even after Norris had insisted sitting alongside the Mercedes driver post-race in Melbourne that “that’s not the mentality to have” as “if you start thinking things are good and groovy, that’s when you get caught”.

“I think their car is definitely capable of winning every race and their car should win every race, but I don’t think they will win every race this year,” Russell said of the MCL39 – a different stance to when he claimed the RB19 would win every race of the 2023 F1 season for Red Bull after round one that year.

“Let’s see, I think the gap they have on everybody this year is bigger than Red Bull has ever had.

“But when Max was in that car [in 2023], he was pretty reliable every single lap, he did every single run in Q3 or throughout qualifying, it was never really a question. So, hopefully we can be there to capitalise like we were at the weekend – because that should have been a 1-2 for those guys.”

Given that both Norris and Piastri were off the road in Melbourne – and each missed on their first runs in Q3 the day before – the subtext to this can be read as Russell suggesting the McLaren drivers make more mistakes than Verstappen when running comfortably at the front of the pack. Piastri, remember, never got back to the podium after his spin after following Norris into the Melbourne Turn 12 gravel when the rain returned last Sunday.

But Mercedes insiders insist this isn’t a mind game tactic Russell is employing – in the hope of knocking Norris and Piastri off their stride.

There is also wilder theory going around the paddock that Russell and Norris have had a falling out, but when Autosport put his rival’s comments to the McLaren driver in an exclusive interview, Norris’s genial response suggested nothing untoward.

Norris, instead, seemed surprised to hear Russell’s latest words, but he did not respond with any animosity.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

“I don’t know – George has been talking a lot lately,” Norris said. “It seems like they think the season’s over already before it’s even started. And I said that it was probably the wrong mentality to have last weekend already. I don’t know, just seems a bit odd.

“They should probably just focus more as a team rather than talking as much as they are.

“But it doesn’t change anything. Like, yeah, thank you – it’s a compliment. We’re doing an amazing job. We’re doing a better job than them.

“We’re proud of that, but we will still work hard because, yeah, Ferrari are doing a better job than them and Red Bull are doing a better job than them.

“They can say what [they want]. I’m happy when George says these things because it means that they’re probably a little bit worried.”

Mercedes’ position is that Russell is simply facing up to the new reality – that, for 2025 at least, F1 may have replaced one dominant car package with another.

What makes McLaren’s situation different to Red Bull is, however, what Russell suggested in Melbourne.

That with the upcoming 2026 rule changes, if the orange team’s rivals fall quickly behind in the championship standings, then they may switch development focus to the new regulations and direct only resources that are strictly necessary towards their 2025 cars.

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

That would strengthen McLaren’s hand considerably.

The flipside of all of this is that there remains little data to confirm what McLaren’s rivals fear – it has been only one race.

But that Verstappen – even in conditions where he is class-leading – fell behind by nearly 20s in just 17 laps in Melbourne has attracted attention. That was at an average of 0.84s lost each lap, in the second half of the opening stint on the intermediate tyres.

And now McLaren arrives in China feeling even more confident because of how it went here with “not a very good car”, according to Norris, in 2024.

The Shanghai track has much longer corners than Melbourne and with dry weather predicted it will test the cars’ aerodynamic platforms much more like the teams would get at, say, F1’s ‘laboratory’ track in Catalunya.

The Shanghai layout has also been re-laid for 2025 in a bid to eliminate the bumps that forced teams into considerable set-up compromises here last year.

Ultimately, around all the projection and noise, F1 should know exactly how good McLaren really is as it packs up and heads home on Sunday.