We’re three quarters into the 2025 Formula 1 season, but the game has just changed.

In the background of McLaren’s championship-winning euphoria is the hum of anxiety that the team has been caught.

Max Verstappen’s footsteps are growing louder, and with six rounds remaining, he might have just enough time to pinch the drivers title from right under the noses of leader Oscar Piastri and teammate Lando Norris.

His deficit of 63 points is still significant, requiring a turnaround of 10.5 points per weekend. If he were to win every grand prix and every sprint with Piastri no higher than third, he would claim the title by three points.

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It’s a tall order. But then again, he’s outscored Piastri by 41 points in the last three rounds, which equates to 13.7 points per weekend. He’s outscored at least one McLaren driver every weekend since the mid-season break and both at the last three weekends.

The threat to McLaren’s first title double since 1998 is about more than just Verstappen’s points haul, however.

The stretch of races spanning Italy, Azerbaijan and Singapore are the first time this season that McLaren has failed to score pole for three successive weekends. It’s the first time this season the team hasn’t had the fastest car for three weekends in a row.

Singapore, the previous race, was its worst qualifying result of the year by pace, with Piastri, the team’s fastest driver, lapping 0.366 seconds (100.41 per cent) off pole.

Azerbaijan, the weekend prior, was its worst qualifying result by position, with Norris, the team’s best placed driver, qualifying seventh. It was just the second time this year at least one McLaren didn’t start on the front row and the first time this season at least one of them didn’t start from the first two rows.

The trend is clear. The only question now is whether McLaren can do anything about it.

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THE STING IN THE DEVELOPMENT TAIL

None of this is surprising to McLaren boss Andrea Stella.

The Italian team principal was the first to identify Verstappen as a genuine championship threat shortly after the mid-season break, and his premonition has so far proved accurate.

Speaking to reporters in Singapore, the cause of the momentum swing is clear.

“There’s a trend whereby we have stopped the development of the car now for quite some time because we’ve been focusing entirely on 2026,” he said. “There were little parts that we took to Monza, but otherwise we are just focusing on 2026.

“Meanwhile we have seen that some competitors kept taking trackside some new upgrades. Red Bull certainly is one of those.”

Red Bull Racing has indeed been pushing hard with its 2025 upgrades, somewhat reminiscent of the way it threw everything at Verstappen’s title hopes in 2021 despite the looming rule changes.

RBR has brought new parts to all eight of the last grands prix in succession. McLaren has brought upgrades to just four of those rounds.

Red Bull Racing boss Laurent Mekies admitted that it was compromising development on next year’s car but argued that it was important to the team’s success not only this year but also in future seasons to understand where it had gone so wrong.

“Certainly from Red Bull Racing’s perspective, even without looking at the other guys around, it was and it is very important that we get to understand if the project has more performance,” he said.

“It’s important that we get to the bottom of it because we will elaborate next year’s project, even if the regulations are completely different, with the same tools, with the same methodology.

“It’s very important that we validate with this year’s car that our way of looking at the data is correct, our way of developing the car is correct, and that produces that level of performance that will give us confidence in the winter for next year’s car.

“Of course it comes at a cost, undoubtedly, to the 2026 project, but we feel it’s the right trade-off for us, without judging what the other guys are doing.”

Whether by design or by accident, some of the team’s most recent upgrades have had a mildly revolutionary effect on the championship battle.

McLaren is looking over its shoulder.Source: AFP

THE OUTLOOK

The result in Singapore dealt damage to the F1 orthodoxy that McLaren probably still has the best all-round car. While Singapore is an outlier circuit — a slow, high-downforce street track — it’s at the opposite end of the spectrum to Monza and Baku, which are fast, low-downforce tracks.

Not only was McLaren beaten at all three, but Verstappen beat both McLaren drivers at all three, even if he didn’t win in Singapore.

Those results have Red Bull Racing in the ascendancy.

“Being able to fight for the win here means a lot,” Mekies said. “We’ve been able to be in the right rhythms from Friday. We were in the right rhythm in qualifying. It was very, very close to pole, and we were in the right rhythm in the race — we finished a few seconds away from George.

“This is good news. It means that what we have unlocked is not only low-downforce-specific.”

But Stella doesn’t see the trend as quite so simply moving away from his team.

“We seem to observe a pattern, having been in Baku and then here in Singapore, that resembles what we have seen in Canada and when we have braking with bumps and with kerbs,” he said. “In Canada we were not the best car, in Baku we were not the best car and in Singapore we are not the best car.

“We needed to wait a few races at low downforce tracks, like Monza and Baku, and then this [high-downforce] one [in Singapore] to identify that there’s also a pattern from a technical point of view.

“I think one is the pattern of braking with bumps and kerbs, and the other one is with the low downforce like we saw in Monza and Baku.

“I think we saw that we gained the time in mid-corner, but every mid-corner [in Singapore] is kind of too short. Here is dominated by braking and traction, and with bumps and kerbs we just seem to be suffering a bit.

“It’s a regime in which simply we are not the most competitive.”

We can draw some tentative conclusions about the new form guide.

Red Bull Racing is back to being a decent all-rounder but is still weaker than the McLaren at long and medium-speed corners.

McLaren, meanwhile, is now weaker than the RB21 on very fast or very slow tracks and when the car is required to attack bumps or kerbs. It appears to retain its class-leading tyre-management abilities.

It’s a combination of characteristics that leave the two cars so closely matched that both teams are expecting to be beaten at this weekend’s United States Grand Prix.

“It’s back to mid-speed corners, where McLaren was also very strong here,” Mekies said in Singapore. “In turn 5, turn 9 they have been very, very strong all weekend against us, and you have a lot of them in Austin and in Mexico.

“We take it race by race, and then we’ll see.”

Stella, meanwhile, sees the next two rounds differently.

“I would expect that Austin will still be a bit of a struggle for us, because the corners are tight in many braking areas,” he said.

“Our tracks still remain the likes of Brazil, Qatar, Abu Dhabi. Perhaps earlier on in the season, when we had a bit more advantage, we could go better with some other circuits, but some competitors kept developing their car or understanding better how to use their car, so now the field has become even more competitive.”

Equipped with new information from the unpredictable four rounds since the mid-season break, let’s consider the run home.

All the momentum is with Max Verstappen.Source: Getty Images

UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX

2024 qualifying: Norris (1) ahead of Verstappen (2)

2024 race: Verstappen (3) ahead of Norris (4)

Stats that matter: Verstappen is a three-time winner from the last four events; McLaren last won here in 2012.

The Circuit of the Americas is the most conventional permanent circuit the sport will visit for the rest of the season, featuring a wide array of corners that will offer something for both teams.

As Mekies predicts, McLaren will dominate the first half of the circuit, which is dominated by medium and high-speed corners modelled on Silverstone’s Maggots and Becketts.

But the second half of the track is dominated by tight corners, which will give Red Bull Racing an advantage, as Stella posits.

The Sunday forecast is for a sunny day of 31°C. That’s good news for McLaren and its tyre strength.

But the bad news is COTA is historically very bumpy, which could knock the car back out of its sweet spot. Plus this race being a multiple-stop affair will put pressure on McLaren’s emerging pit stop weakness.

The tie breaker? History is very much on Red Bull Racing and Verstappen’s side.

Verdict: Red Bull Racing.

MEXICO CITY GRAND PRIX

2024 qualifying: Verstappen (2) ahead of Norris (3)

2024 race: Norris (2) ahead of Verstappen (6)

Stats that matter: Verstappen is a five-time winner from the last seven events; no McLaren driver has won here in the circuit’s modern history.

Mexico City’s Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is one of the sport’s oddest outliers. Situated 2240 metres above sea level, the thinness of the air has a significant impact on the cars, which produce less downforce than they do in Monza despite running as much wing as they do in Monaco. The rare air also substantially affects engine and brake cooling.

Austria is the only high-altitude race run this year, but at only around 700 metres above sea level, it doesn’t really compare.

The layout on paper is Red Bull Racing territory, comprising lots of slow and fiddly corners between long flat-out blasts, though perhaps McLaren’s efficient cooling package can claw back some performance.

Verdict: Red Bull Racing.

SÃO PAULO GRAND PRIX

2024 qualifying: Norris (1) ahead of Verstappen (12)

2024 race: Verstappen (1) ahead of Norris (6)

Stats that matter: Verstappen is a three-time winner, including the last two grands prix; McLaren last won here in 2012.

Last year’s race in Interlagos all but snuffed out Norris’s longshot hopes of beating Verstappen to the title, but that result was owed to the Dutchman’s peerless brilliance in the wet rather than car performance.

The track characteristics should have made this — and should make this — a McLaren track. Autódromo José Carlos Pace is a momentum circuit of McLaren’s favourite long, medium-speed bends.

Indeed McLaren locked out the sprint front row and claimed a one-two in the short race in dry conditions, and Norris even managed to take pole in the treacherous wet of Sunday qualifying.

In the wet race, though, the team fell apart, and Verstappen charged from 12th to a stunning victory.

Consider this unfinished business.

Verdict: McLaren — unless it’s wet.

LAS VEGAS GRAND PRIX

2024 qualifying: Verstappen (5) ahead of Norris (6)

2024 race: Verstappen (5) ahead of Norris (6)

Stats that matter: Verstappen is one of two winners here; no McLaren driver has never qualified or finished higher than sixth.

If McLaren has had Brazil pencilled in as a lucrative weekend, Las Vegas will have been circled in permanent marker as a danger round.

McLaren has never been good in the unique conditions of Las Vegas’s long straights, slow corners and chilly climate. It was dreadful in the race’s first year and merely underwhelming last season.

Given everything we know about Red Bull Racing’s relative strengths at high speed and on street tracks, this is a Verstappen no-brainer.

That said, Mercedes will start the round favourite after having dominated this race last year and with this year’s car still exhibiting many of the same characteristics as its predecessor.

Verdict: Red Bull Racing — but probably behind Mercedes.

Verstappen has history in Las Vegas.Source: AFP

QATAR GRAND PRIX

2024 qualifying: Verstappen (1) ahead of Norris (3)

2024 race: Verstappen (1) ahead of Piastri (3)

Stats that matter: Verstappen has won the last two grands prix here; McLaren has won the last two sprints.

This is the second circuit McLaren believes will be a strong one this year, though it failed to take pole or win in Lusail last season.

It was partly down to circumstance, with Norris penalised for ignoring yellow flags during the race and dropping out of victory contention, but there’s no doubt Red Bull Racing and Verstappen found a sweet spot with set-up to take on McLaren.

But the layout is clearly in the McLaren column, being dominated by long-duration, high-speed bends. The only possible quirk is that for the last two seasons this circuit hasn’t overheated the tyres, which could give Verstappen an in if circumstances flow his way.

Verdict: McLaren.

ABU DHABI GRAND PRIX

2024 qualifying: Norris (1) ahead of Verstappen (5)

2024 race: Norris (1) ahead of Verstappen (6)

Stats that matter: Verstappen has won four of the last five races here from pole; Norris won from pole last season.

Norris won from pole in Yas Marina last season to confirm the constructors title for McLaren, and it’s easy to see why the team is forecasting another romp this year. The track is wide and billiard table smooth, eliminating some potential weaknesses, while the 2021 reconfiguration of the track has made it faster and more flowing by deleting the sort of fiddly corners this year’s car wouldn’t have liked.

That said, this circuit won’t be totally unfriendly to Red Bull Racing.

The right turn 5 hairpin leads on the first back straight, which ends in a chicane. The third sector is also supposed to mimic a traditional street layout with its slow 90-degree corners that will favour the RB21.

It might not be enough to make this a Red Bull Racing track, but it could be closer than last year suggested.

Verdict: McLaren.

Overall count: 3-3