The performance of constructors’ champions McLaren in 2025 has left their closest rivals wondering how they have gained such an advantage over them so far this season.

McLaren are dominating this season, winning nine of the first 12 rounds of the championship and scoring more than double the points of closest rivals Ferrari.

Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris are also clear ahead in the drivers’ standings, with Piastri holding a slim, eight-point lead over his team mate. The two McLaren drivers are the clear favourites for this year’s title.

Many expected the 2025 season would see a close fight between many teams. McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari all won multiple races over the closing stages of last season and the coming change in regulations for 2026 gave teams a reason not to depart too far from their current designs.

However, McLaren appear to have found a major performance gain for the third consecutive season. Reigning world champion Max Verstappen is 69 points adrift of leader Piastri.

Mercedes driver George Russell admitted his team “don’t really know exactly why” McLaren enjoy such a large advantage over the rest of the field.

“They seem very good on the tyres,” he said in response to a question from RaceFans. “They seem very good in hot races. Clearly their updates are working as they expect and I think when you find yourself on the right tracks of this development slope, the rewards are endless, and they’ve clearly found that perfect path.

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“These cars, these regulations, are not easy. I think we’re all looking forward to a change of regs. It’s not going to be easy next year, but the cars do seem a little bit more conventional. But then obviously we’re going to have the challenges with the power unit and the batteries, so that’s a secondary factor.”

Ferrari are the closest challengers to McLaren in the constructors’ championship, but have only half their points tally. Charles Leclerc said he had been left unable to comprehend the pace of the championship leaders at times in the first half of the season.

“I wish I knew what made McLaren so fast this year,” he said.

“For sure, they’ve done a significant step forward, something that I don’t think many of us expected. Because when you get to the last year of those regulations, everything tends to converge a little bit. But this year they just did a big step forward.

“I doubt that it’s coming from one thing. It never comes from only one thing. I think it’s just many different things that they are doing better than others, which makes a big difference at the end.”

He said he had been particularly impressed by McLaren’s pace in the final practice session for the Bahrain Grand Prix. As track temperatures rose over 40C, Leclerc was the quickest driver not in a McLaren, but was over eight tenths of a second slower than Piastri.

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“It is true that one of the characteristics that significantly has improved since last year is hot weather,” he said. “I think I remember there was a practice session in Bahrain this year where I’m still wondering ‘how did Oscar do that lap time in that heat?’, which was very impressive.

“There are these kinds of laps that you look and you’re just a bit lost for words and you don’t really understand where the performance comes from. So they found something, especially whenever it’s warm and on tyres, that we’re still trying to figure out.”

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