It’s McLaren’s Championship To Lose Now

The Austrian Grand Prix showed McLaren’s dominance in the 2025 Formula 1 world championship with Lando Norris taking a strong victory over his younger and faster Papaya teammate Oscar Piastri. Meanwhile Red Bull suffered the worst race it possibly could have at its home Red Bull Ring track, seeing Max Verstappen’s first retirement and non-points finish since Australia 2024. McLaren’s mildly-exciting 1-2 dramatically overshadowed Ferrari in a distant 3-4 and George Russell’s Mercedes way back in 5th had nothing to say this weekend after a strong win in Canada. This one race effectively put a stamp on the 2025 F1 season, and it’s a two-horse race now. With more than half the season remaining, it’s possible one team or another will find some speed and mount a significant challenge in the coming months, but McLaren has enough of a lead that the team would have to come undone for anyone else to take them down. I asked my Magic 8 Ball if someone other than McLaren would win the title and it said “Very Doubtful.” If it helps, Racer Magazine’s Chris Medland agrees.

As it sits McLaren has nearly as many points as Ferrari and Mercedes put together with 417 points on top of the pile compared to 210 and 209 respectively. With eight wins from the first 11 Grands Prix, it’s a pretty dominant start to a championship effort. There have been stronger, for sure, as Red Bull’s 2023 complete domination, but McLaren’s in the catbird seat. In 2024 the orange team took the World Constructors’ Championship with just 666 points on the season for an average of 27.75 points per Grand Prix. So far this season McLaren has delivered an incredible 37.9 points per Grand Prix with only one non-points finish so far, Norris’ self-inflicted crash in Canada. If this string of success continues, the team will exceed its 2024 championship-winning points total by round 18 in Singapore. 

If the constructors’ championship is a foregone conclusion for McLaren, the World Drivers’ Championship wall all-but-certainly go to a Papaya driver in 2025. Any hopes Max Verstappen had of repeating as champion this year were finally dashed at the Austrian Grand Prix. Red Bull built a car specifically for Max and seemingly nobody else can drive it to anything resembling results, putting all of their points eggs in a single basket, and it seems the basket has a hole in it. Red Bull brought car upgrades to Spielberg, but they only seemed to push the car further away from the top step with Max qualifying down in seventh, nearly a full second off the McLaren pace, and behind his previous teammate demoted to the Racing Bulls team, Liam Lawson. 

When the Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli speared headlong into Max on the first lap, taking both drivers out of the race, that was effectively the end of any challenge Max might have been able to mount for the 2025 season. With just 155 points to championship leader Oscar Piastri’s 216, Max would need back-to-back-to-back wins with back-to-back-to-back double-retirements for McLaren to gain the championship lead, and neither pieces of that puzzle seem feasible. Max doesn’t have the car, and McLaren just doesn’t miss. For the remaining races Max would need to outscore Oscar by 5 points per weekend to become champion. 

The two McLaren drivers are basically neck and neck with Oscar’s points lead shrinking to just 15 points following Lando’s victory on Sunday. The team has already said it will let the drivers fight, and the strategic scrap the two had this weekend proved that out. Nobody has their number, so they just have to race it out between them. Whichever of them pulls it off will see McLaren’s first double-championship since Ayrton Senna in 1991.