We’re only two-thirds of the way through the season and Formula 1 is already preparing to award its first championship.

McLaren’s second consecutive constructors championship and the 10th in its history is all but assured.

The British team’s domination of 2025 has been contradictory. It’s been both quiet and absolute.

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Woking hasn’t cruised to victory easily every weekend in the way some powerhouses have in the past. In fact it’s lost every fourth race this season, with the crumbs collected by Max Verstappen and George Russell.

But at the same time, it’s been clear from early on that no team would be able to challenge McLaren’s class-leading car or its powerful driver line-up of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

It means the Azerbaijan Grand Prix is overwhelmingly likely to see the constructors championship awarded.

What’s more, McLaren’s triumph will bring with it a host of record-breaking feats that will set aside its 2025 season as one of the greatest in history.

PIT TALK PODCAST: Michael and Matt delve into F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali’s ideas to refresh the Formula 1 weekend format, including shorter grands prix, more sprints and reverse grid races.

WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO WIN THE TITLE?

McLaren’s superiority at the top of the table sees it with more than double the points of second-placed Ferrari.

It means championship victory is comfortably within reach this weekend, albeit it’s not quite a formality.

Let’s consider the maths.

Constructors still in championship contention

1. McLaren: 617 points

2. Ferrari: 280 points (-337 points)

3. Mercedes: 260 points (-357 points)

4. Red Bull Racing: 239 points (-378 points)

McLaren must lead by 346 points by the end of this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix to seal the constructors championship.

To do so, it must meet several conditions.

McLaren must:

(1) outscore Ferrari by at least nine points;

(2) not be outscored by Mercedes by 12 points or more; and

(3) not be outscored by Red Bull Racing by 33 points or more.

For context, so far this season McLaren has outscored Ferrari by an average of 21 points per round and outscored Mercedes and Red Bull Racing by 22 and 24 points per round respectively.

If those trends continue, McLaren will easily satisfy all the above criteria.

In fact McLaren has outscored every team at every weekend this season with just two exceptions: the Australian Grand Prix, where it was tied with Mercedes, and the Canadian Grand Prix, where fourth-placed Piastri was the team’s only scorer after Norris crashed out of the race.

Canada was also the only race in which McLaren failed to outscore Ferrari by at least 12 points. Instead it lost six points to the Italian team.

Put another way, McLaren has outscored Ferrari by more than the requisite nine points every time both its drivers have finished.

History is similarly in McLaren’s favour against Mercedes and Red Bull Racing.

Canada was the only race at which each team outscored McLaren by any amount — Mercedes by 28 and Red Bull Racing by six points.

In other words, Red Bull Racing would have to outscore McLaren by more than it has at any other weekend this season by a factor of 5.5 just to remain mathematically in contention.

Mercedes would have to hope for a repeat of Montreal to keep its forlorn hopes alive.

The summary? If this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix looks even remotely like any other race this season, McLaren will win the constructors championship.

If by some miracle — or curse — it does not, it will need to lead by only 303 points after the following Singapore Grand Prix, when the title will surely be a formality.

Piastri praised for pit blunder reaction | 02:00

WHERE WOULD THIS SEASON RANK IN HISTORY?

Perhaps it’s been the sporadic victories for Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, or maybe it’s been the obvious focus on the drivers championship fight. Whatever the reason, McLaren’s domination of the 2025 season has been quiet and unassuming.

Its crowning moment has crept up stealthily despite its inevitability.

But if McLaren does seal the deal as expected this weekend, by several metrics this will be the most comprehensive championship victory in history.

More dominant than Red Bull Racing in 2023

Red Bull Racing and Verstappen shattered numerous records in 2023, when together they won every race but one — the Singapore Grand Prix, a bogey track of the team in the ground-effect era.

The Dutchman himself won 19 of those races, with Sergio Pérez claiming the other two.

The season was so close to complete, so near perfect, that it was difficult to imagine anyone meeting or beating any of those benchmarks.

But this weekend McLaren could pinch one of the records.

If McLaren claims the championship in Baku, it will be the earliest constructors championship victory in history.

Red Bull Racing won it with six rounds to spare. McLaren will win it with seven, with a maximum of 303 points still up for grabs.

The achievement would be a revenge of sorts. Prior to Red Bull Racing, the record had been held jointly by McLaren (1988) and Ferrari (2004), both of which won their respective championships with five rounds remaining.

Red Bull Racing’s unprecedented 2023 campaign also set records for largest points score and biggest championship margin.

Its tally of 860 points at the end of the season was the biggest in history. While that record can’t be broken this weekend, McLaren is on trajectory to beat it by the end of the year.

Woking’s current count is 617 points. If it continues scoring at its average rate of 38.6 points per round, it will end the year on 925 points.

That would also see it comfortably break the record for biggest winning margin — currently Red Bull Racing’s thumping 451-point defeat of Mercedes in 2023.

Assuming all teams continue scoring on their current trajectories, McLaren would beat Ferrari by 506 points, 926-420.

Both these points-related records come with the obvious asterisk of the sport’s changing points structures over the years, with the current system awarding 25 points for a win the most generous in history. But considering the scale of domination in some of the years since the modern points system was instituted, they’re significant markers nonetheless.

Chaos as Norris forced off by Verstappen | 00:28

More prolific than Mercedes in 2014-15-16

Mercedes’s 2015 campaign was an exercise in incremental improvement on its sport-shakingly dominant 2014 campaign, the first season under the then new turbo-hybrid regulations.

The German marque won all but three races that year — on all three occasions to Sebastian Vettel in his first season with Ferrari — but was just about unimpeachable otherwise.

It set the record for most one-two finishes at 12, up one on its 2014 effort.

The sublime consistency of McLaren’s 2025 driver line-up means this record is now under threat.

To date Piastri and Norris have finished in one-two formation seven times this year, including four times in the last six rounds.

McLaren would need six perfect finishes from the last eight rounds to break the record — a stretch, but clearly achievable on the basis the team has become more dominant as the season has gone on.

If it does so, it will also surpass Mercedes’s outright tally of one-two finishes (60) and move to second on the list behind Ferrari’s record 87 perfect finishes. It’s currently on 56.

Given its one-two record, Mercedes unsurprisingly also set the record for most podium finishes during its mid-2010s golden run, resetting the benchmark in 2014, 2015 and eventually in 2016 at 33.

McLaren currently has 27 podiums for the year. It needs just seven more rostrum appearances between its two drivers to break the record.

Piastri forced to give second place up | 01:18

More productive than McLaren in 1988

The quiet nature of McLaren’s dominance means some of the headline records are unreachable.

For example, it isn’t in a position to better Red Bull Racing’s record of 21 wins in 2023. That tally also stands as a record by percentage, representing a strike rate of 95.5 per cent.

Having already lost four grands prix this season, McLaren can end the season with 20 wins at most. That would put it second for most wins in a season.

That represents a strike rate of 83.3 per cent, which would be fourth on the all-time list in terms of percentage.

It would put this season in an interesting context for McLaren internally, however.

McLaren’s 1988 season is the stuff of Formula 1 legend. The ferocious title battle between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost delivered an almost perfect season in which the team won 15 of 16 races, fumbling over only the Italian Grand Prix.

Equating to a 93.8 per cent victory tally, it was a season thought unrepeatable before Red Bull Racing in 2023.

But whereas 2023 was an exercise in obliteration, the internal title fight of 1988 elevates McLaren’s campaign to another level. Its place in F1 folklore is unrivalled.

But this season McLaren is revisiting many stops on the path.

If it wins the title this weekend, it will have done so with more races remaining (seven) than it did in 1988 (five).

If it can win four of the next eight races, it will beat its 1988 tally of 15 wins, the most ever won by McLaren in one season.

It could yet beat that year’s tally of 10 one-two finishes, which was the benchmark before Mercedes’s 2014 and 2015 seasons.

If you recalculated 1988’s results with this year’s points tally, McLaren would have scored 549 points over 16 rounds, or 34.3 points per round.

McLaren this season is already on track to eclipse that. After 16 rounds it’s already accumulated 617 points at an average of 38.6 points per weekend

It also has more podiums after 16 rounds this year (27) than it did in 1988 (25). In 1988 that equated to a podium rate of 78.1 per cent. McLaren would need 11 more podium finishes from its 16 remaining attempts to beat that record too.

And of course it’s on track to finish one-two in the drivers championship. It would be only the fourth time in the team’s history it achieved such a feat, following 1984 (Niki Lauda and Prost), 1988 (Senna and Prost) and 1989 (Prost and Senna).

McLaren pit blunder costs Piastri | 01:18

WHAT ABOUT THE DRIVERS TITLE?

It’s impossible to say whether the Piastri-Norris rivalry will grow to become a defining one for this Formula 1 era. Today they get along well and share no animosity, and the team determined to avoid repeating the history of Senna and Prost’s famous fallout — or, more recently, the aggro between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso in 2007.

But statistically it’s clear this young driver combination will take McLaren to new statistical heights.

In fact Piastri himself is on the verge of some personal history in his pursuit of the championship.

The Australian has now recorded 44 consecutive finishes. His third place in Italy surpassed Verstappen’s tally of 43.

Piastri’s last failure to finish was at the United States Grand Prix in October 2023, his rookie season.

Lewis Hamilton holds the record outright on 48 uninterrupted finishes.

Piastri would reach that milestone in Mexico City and beat it in Sao Paulo if he can stay out of trouble between now and then.

But perhaps more pertinent to the championship fight is the record for consecutive scoring weekends.

Hamilton again holds the record, with 48, ahead of Max Verstappen (43) and Piastri (42). His last scoreless weekend was the Sao Paulo Grand Prix in November 2023.

Piastri would equal the record in Las Vegas and break it Qatar if he can continue collecting points.

It’s worth noting that this statistic includes sprint scores — but with three sprints remaining, the points scored in the short races could be crucial to deciding the title outcome.

You can look at that record two ways.

On the one hand, it’s an illustration of what we already know about Piastri — that he’s metronomically consistent and doesn’t waste his chances. Those qualities are key to his title lead.

Piastri is in a position — just — to absorb one DNF without losing the title lead. If he were to fail to score, however, it would put the championship back on a knife edge.

And this is the second way to look at it.

To retain that points buffer, Piastri would have to do something literally never achieved in 75 years of Formula 1 history.

If he were to make it to the end of the season without a non-scoring weekend, not only would he probably — though not certainly — have won his first title, but he would have set a formidable record on the way.

There’s so much history on the line in 2025, and this is only the first chapter of McLaren’s modern golden era.