Was McLaren’s Austrian GP dominance a sign F1 2025 is already over?

Lando Norris’ and Oscar Piastri’s Austrian waltz flattened any hope that McLaren could still be caught in the 2025 Formula 1 championship, but the result flattered its actual dominance and doesn’t rule out further race-by-race challengers.

Red Bull was particularly despondent after being thumped at its home race, figuratively in terms of pace and quite literally as Andrea Kimi Antonelli torpedoed an unlucky Max Verstappen on the opening lap.

A stoic Verstappen soon moved on and tuned into the broadcast of the Spa 24 Hours to see his nascent GT3 team win its class. But it prompted team principal Christian Horner to use some rather colourful imagery as he appraised McLaren’s advantage with a mixture of admiration, envy and astonishment. 

On Piastri’s ability to remain glued to Norris despite the dirty air, Horner said: “He’s basically making love to his f****** exhaust pipe for lap after lap after lap, and the tyres are not dying. I can’t see any other car that would be able to follow that closely and not ruin the front tyres or the rear tyres. I don’t really understand.”

The best car got better 

There’s no doubt that McLaren was supremely impressive. It brought its latest batch of upgrades to the Red Bull Ring, with an aerodynamical update to its front suspension and both its front and rear corners, making the 2025 car more efficient and, importantly, offering a more significant improvement than the new sculpted edge wing curls seen on the Red Bull.

A lot of teams would have turned it into a boring race, so kudos to McLaren for letting its two drivers race, despite events in Canada.

Over such a short 64-second lap, Norris’ half-second qualifying gap to Leclerc was enormous, and on Sunday he and Piastri simply tipped their hats at the Ferrari driver and said farewell, Norris gapping the Monegasque by 20 seconds.

But we’ve been here before. Yes, the championship is over if you’re not driving a papaya car, but in the same way that questions were prematurely asked whether McLaren was starting to get caught after a podium-less weekend in Canada, we probably shouldn’t overreact after a return of papaya dominance in Austria.

Especially as the track was always going to be a strong circuit for the MCL39 with its favoured long corners across the second half of the 4km loop, which doll out real punishment to Pirelli’s tyres that was exacerbated by the heat.

The biggest unknown, of course, is exactly how far off Verstappen would have finished at his historically successful Red Bull Ring with a clean weekend. Having qualified out of position due to yellow flags in Q3, the four-time champion didn’t even complete a single racing lap on Sunday. But in the Spielberg paddock, the consensus was that he would have likely taken the fight to Leclerc for third.

Combined with Yuki Tsunoda’s collapse and Mercedes’ well-documented struggles at swelteringly hot races, that left the onus on Ferrari to do the chasing, which Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton simply weren’t equipped for. 

Even with a second lap for Verstappen, a faultless Norris’ pole gap was likely going to be sizeable, but in race trim this wasn’t even McLaren’s most dominant race of the season. We’ve been here before, in Miami when McLaren mauled the competition.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

Qualifying errors by both papaya drivers left the door open for Verstappen to take pole, but then, both Piastri and Norris dropped Verstappen and the Australian won the race by 37 seconds over McLaren’s nearest challenger Russell, and 40 seconds on the Dutchman.

Crucially, this was a straight street fight between all the heavy hitters, which was not the case in Spielberg. 

McLaren’s best qualifying and race result compared to its nearest rivals, bold indicates a deficit.

Silver linings for race-by-race battles 

A look at the gaps between McLaren and its nearest challengers over the first 10 race weekends doesn’t take into account late safety cars and other factors, but it still underlines a trend, i.e. Andrea Stella’s apples and pears theory (or apples and oranges if you’re an English speaker). 

Austria belonged to the apple category along with Miami, Bahrain and China, while McLaren has come under more pressure at races with lots of shorter high-speed direction changes where it couldn’t deploy its warm weather tyre management prowess to the same extent. 

Looking at the remainder of the pre-summer break campaign, there are no prizes for guessing who’s the favourite on the twisty Hungaroring, which became easy prey for McLaren in 2024. 

Silverstone might throw up a different picture, however, especially if the colder and changeable weather that is being predicted persists. And Spa is also a more balanced circuit that should benefit Red Bull’s aero efficiency and can throw up surprise results, as we saw last year. Ahead of both races, Mercedes will no doubt be doing a rain dance in an attempt to improve its chances. 

Yes, the constructors’ title may be over, but not every race will be like Austria. Wishful thinking? The stopwatch will have the final word.