Does F1 have a girlfriend obsession? What Singapore GP coverage actually reveals<\/a><\/p>\nMika Hakkinen and Jacques Villeneuve both weighed in on the ongoing championship fight in their position as guests at the Il Festival dello Sport di Trento, a four-day festival in Italy that honors some of the greatest athletes of our generation.<\/p>\n
Naturally, with two former Formula 1 champions available, Hakkinen and Villeneuve were asked for their perspective on the 2025 fight, and who will win the Drivers\u2019 Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to say McLaren, of course,\u201d Hakkinen told the audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team will certainly give the drivers orders to avoid trouble. They are both very good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet both drivers on the team have their own unique advantages, which the Finnish driver expounded on.<\/p>\n
\u201cLando has much more experience. That counts for a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cBut he also has fewer points. So I don\u2019t know, one of the two.\u201d<\/p>\n
Villeneuve, on the other hand, doesn\u2019t believe McLaren has what it takes to become Drivers\u2019 champions.<\/p>\n
Asked who he felt would win the title, he replied, \u201cVerstappen. And so it will be his best World Championship ever. Because the two McLaren drivers are suffering too much from the pressure. They need to wake up.\u201d<\/p>\n
While a McLaren driver seems an obvious choice for the title honors, Villeneuve is right to highlight Verstappen\u2019s chances.<\/p>\n
As the F1 2025 season comes to a close, most teams have already begun developmental work for the incoming 2026 season, which will bring with it a massive overhaul in chassis and engine regulations. Each team has had to determine when in 2025 they would need to cease introducing upgrades, instead focusing entirely on 2026.<\/p>\n
McLaren has already made that cross-over; Red Bull has not. The Milton Keynes team introduced a new floor in Italy that completely transformed the difficult RB21 into a race-winning machine. Further, Red Bull has introduced small tweaks at subsequent races in an effort to further refine their machinery to accommodate the circuit in question.<\/p>\n
Andrea Stella, McLaren team principal, pointed this out in Singapore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were competitive in Monza, very competitive. And then they were competitive in Baku,\u201d he said during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, a circuit with vastly different downforce requirements to the high-speed Monza and Baku.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought, \u2018Let\u2019s see whether this [competitiveness] depends on using a low level of drag, small rear wings, and [if] it can be repeated at high level drag and big rear wings\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere in Singapore, they might have struggled a bit in the past, and the evidence is that they might have resolved both of these high-drag and Singapore factors.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this is not a surprise. It\u2019s Red Bull. They are extremely capable.<\/p>\n
\u201cMax is a driver who is just Max Verstappen. I don\u2019t think we need to make any further comments, so it\u2019s no surprise that they are in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tight, and it\u2019s interesting; obviously, we would like to make Formula 1 boring. We have done it sometimes, at some of the events, but normally, Formula 1 is competitive and tight.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to accept the fight, and that\u2019s what we are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Laurent Mekies, new CEO and team principal for Red Bull, pointed out that the abundance of mid-speed corners at coming tracks like Circuit of The Americas and Mexico City are corners where \u201cMcLaren has been very strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who\u2019s set to take the title? We won\u2019t know until the chequered flag falls in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n
Read next:\u00a0New Ron Dennis revelation comes to light after Sky F1 man \u2018kicked out\u2019 for wearing jeans<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The championship battle between McLaren teammates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri is heating up \u2014 and while it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,818,13207,1737,913,46753,44,2333,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-210943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-home-page","14":"tag-jacques-villeneuve","15":"tag-lando-norris","16":"tag-mclaren","17":"tag-mika-hakkinen","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-oscar-piastri","20":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}