McLaren have had a meteoric rise to the top of F1 in recent months. They have gone from backmarkers at the start of 2023 to constructors’ champions in 2024.

The Woking outfit surpassed Red Bull as the fastest package on the grid midway through last season, which saw them claim their first constructors’ title in 26 years. Despite a late surge from Lando Norris, Max Verstappen had built too big a gap to dethrone him.

Coming into 2025, McLaren were tipped as the clear favourites. They have certainly turned the hype around them into performance as they have won all but three races thus far and lead the way by 299 points as the season enters the summer break.

There has only been one race where no McLaren driver has been on the podium, as Oscar Piastri lost out to Kimi Antonelli at the Canadian GP. Piastri was hit by teammate Norris in the closing stages, causing the Brit’s retirement.

Since then, the team have been utterly dominant, with 1-2 finishes in the last four races. McLaren can break Mercedes’ record of most 1-2 finishes in a season, with six more being enough to match Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s feat in 2015.

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Andrea Stella admits he has been ‘surprised’ by how dominant McLaren have been in 2025

McLaren look almost guaranteed to win the constructors’ title, while Piastri now agrees with Verstappen in that the drivers’ championship is between the Aussie and teammate Norris. With 11 wins, eight pole positions and 24 podiums between them, it is hard to look past the two for the title.

Their dominance has been hugely impressive, but something that McLaren team principal Andrea Stella did not expect to see.

Speaking with the Dutch edition of Motorsport.com, he knew that McLaren needed to be ‘very aggressive’ in development to break away from the field, but initially, he did not think efforts were enough.

“I’m surprised by this level of competitiveness. When we discussed last year how much effort we wanted to put into improving the 2024 car, the conclusion was that we definitely wanted to be very ambitious. We wanted to try to break the ‘you never know who’s going to win’ scenario of last year,” he said.

“We knew we needed more than just regular development. How do we do that? We took a very aggressive approach to innovation. The MCL39 is a very innovative car.

“From a technical point of view, we were unsure whether we could actually implement some of the solutions. When we looked at the lap times and simulation data, we thought it wouldn’t be enough. In fact, at the start of the season, it wasn’t enough.

“That’s been a factor throughout this season: the car has actually evolved further.”

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Is friction beginning to arise between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in the 2025 title battle?

As the second half of the 2025 season approaches, Piastri has a slim lead over Norris. With just nine points separating them, the final 10 races are set to be a tense fight between the pair.

Norris has the momentum after his victory at the Hungarian GP. McLaren caused controversy as the Brit was afforded a one-stop strategy, while Piastri was kept on a two-stop and left to fight with Charles Leclerc.

Juan Pablo Montoya has noticed that Piastri is more ‘agitated’ at McLaren, as his recent comments suggest that beating his teammate appears to be his primary concern. With six race wins in 2025, the Aussie is determined to win the title for the team.

Norris and Piastri have ‘never’ had problems with each other up to this point. But with McLaren continuing to give them the freedom to battle on track, tension may boil over between the garages, something that the team will want to avoid.