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Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\n But the pain was suffered for the gain of this weekend, when the team will unleash that changed direction in the first stage of a major upgrade package.<\/p>\n \u201cMy ideal trajectory at the moment is that we would like to close the gap with the next round of upgrades that will happen across the shutdown, with something happening before and something happening after the shutdown,\u201d McLaren boss Andrea Stella said.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully by then the others have not disappeared too far in front in the championship.\u201d<\/p>\n On paper it\u2019s a long shot.<\/p>\n But McLaren has come from a long way back and won the title before \u2014 just two years ago in fact.<\/p>\n Piastri responds to rumours | 01:14<\/p>\n WHAT HAPPENED IN 2024?<\/p>\n McLaren\u2019s breakthrough 2024 championship is one no-one really saw coming<\/a>.<\/p>\n The team was thought to still be in a rebuilding phase. It had made significant strides in 2023, rising from the back of the grid to regular podium contention, but the hierarchy made clear it was still waiting on major infrastructure upgrades to come on tap before it could really move forward\u2014 and much of that work was targeting a return to title contention in 2026 with the change in regulations.<\/p>\n The team talked down its early 2024 potential after pre-season testing but promised, much like 2023, there was goodness in the development pipeline waiting to be unleashed.<\/p>\n That pipeline delivered at the Miami Grand Prix, the sixth round of the season, where a massive suite of developments propelled Lando Norris to the first victory of his career.<\/p>\n Even then, though, we weren\u2019t to know that McLaren was set on a championship-winning trajectory.<\/p>\n The team had been handily beaten all season up to then. It had just two podiums to show for the opening five rounds and had rapidly lost pace with a Red Bull Racing outfit that looked like it was kicking on from its record-breaking domination of 2023.<\/p>\n McLaren started the Miami Grand Prix 99 points adrift of the title lead, and owing to the sprint and Oscar Piastri\u2019s non-scoring grand prix, the deficit widened to 115 points despite Norris\u2019s victory, the first for any McLaren driver since Daniel Ricciardo\u2019s 2021 Monza miracle.<\/p>\n But the Miami upgrade was followed by several more rounds of super-effective updates that inexorably raised McLaren level with and then ahead of Red Bull Racing, which was labouring under the weight of a dead-end car philosophy and a second driver incapable of scoring.<\/p>\n McLaren overhauled the incumbent long before the end of the season \u2014 so long in fact that Ferrari became its closest challenger, running the fight for the constructors title to Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n McLaren doubled its success last year, winning both titles, but this year\u2019s regulation shake-up has erased its advantage.<\/p>\n Having climbed the mountain once, McLaren is now hoping it can repeat history.<\/p>\n Gasly suffers wild crash in Belgium | 00:27<\/p>\n MORE SIMILAR TO 2024 THAN YOU THINK<\/p>\n Things may feel hopeless for McLaren now, but there are some fascinating similarities between its pre-Miami position in 2024 and its standing in this year\u2019s championship.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at the pace standings in the opening stages of 2024. All times are based on normalised 80-second laps to compare different circuits more accurately.<\/p>\n 2024: average gap to fastest before Miami<\/p>\n 1. Red Bull Racing: +0.003 seconds<\/p>\n 2. Ferrari: +0.305 seconds<\/p>\n 3. McLaren: +0.405 seconds<\/p>\n 4. Mercedes: +0.602 seconds.<\/p>\n Red Bull Racing was way ahead of the rest \u2014 its title double in 2023 was the most dominant in Formula 1 history \u2014 and it looked certain to keep things rolling in 2024.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a surprisingly similar spread to what we have today.<\/p>\n 2026: average gap to fastest, year to date<\/p>\n 1. Mercedes: fastest<\/p>\n 2. Ferrari: +0.367 seconds<\/p>\n 3. McLaren: +0.433 seconds<\/p>\n 4. Red Bull Racing: +0.532 seconds<\/p>\n The name of the leading team is different, but McLaren is starting almost exactly as far back this year as it was in 2024.<\/p>\n For reference, let\u2019s take a look at where the competitive order ended up from Miami onwards in 2024.<\/p>\n 2024: average gap to fastest from Miami onwards<\/p>\n 1. McLaren: +0.166 seconds<\/p>\n 2. Red Bull Racing: +0.199 seconds<\/p>\n 3. Ferrari: +0.330 seconds<\/p>\n 4. Mercedes: +0.385 seconds<\/p>\n McLaren moved definitively into top spot, though not with the kind of domination that Red Bull Racing enjoyed in the early phase of the season. RBR also wasn\u2019t completely obliterated; it remained roughly in the mix at many races.<\/p>\n But there is a final important metric that tells us a lot about how McLaren overhauled Red Bull Racing so suddenly and unexpectedly.<\/p>\n 2024: development trajectory<\/p>\n 1. McLaren: improved by 0.012 seconds per race<\/p>\n 2. Mercedes: improved by 0.012 seconds per race<\/p>\n 3. Ferrari: improved by 0.004 seconds per race<\/p>\n 4. Red Bull Racing: degraded by 0.015 seconds per race<\/p>\n This development metric draws a line through each team\u2019s average single-lap deficit to try to measure the efficacy of their upgrades. The numbers from 2024 demonstrate not just that McLaren improved rapidly but also that Red Bull Racing slid back with alarming speed.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a critical second part of the story.<\/p>\n Hamilton smashes the wall in P3! | 01:08<\/p>\n McLAREN CAPITALISED ON RED BULL RACING\u2019S DECLINE<\/p>\n McLaren was clearly a team on the rise, and it started winning in 2024 while Red Bull Racing was still performing at a high level.<\/p>\n But its shift to the top of the table was accelerated by Red Bull Racing\u2019s remarkable demise.<\/p>\n RBR had totally demolished the competition in 2023, winning every race but one to set new records for domination. It had also secured its first-ever one-two finish in the drivers championship, with Verstappen romping to his third title leagues ahead of teammate Sergio P\u00e9rez.<\/p>\n Things couldn\u2019t have got any better, but they weren\u2019t expected to get so much worse.<\/p>\n We now know that the team was falling apart from the inside.<\/p>\n A remarkable brain drain was beginning, with the team haemorrhaging some of its longest serving, best known and most skilled personnel.<\/p>\n Adrian Newey, the legendary technical chief, filed his resignation around the time of the 2024 Miami Grand Prix \u2014 a devastating blow that in retrospect has become symbolic of the team\u2019s demise.<\/p>\n The development path Red Bull Racing had chosen \u2014 and that Newey had reportedly argued against, only to find his design office wasn\u2019t for turning \u2014 led it down a dead-end that turned what had been the greatest car ever built into a twitchy beast that even Verstappen struggled to tame.<\/p>\n But it was P\u00e9rez who bore the brunt of the car\u2019s difficult characteristics \u2014 and his preference for more docile cars had already had him on the ropes against Verstappen.<\/p>\n The season started well enough \u2014 they usually did for P\u00e9rez.<\/p>\n 2024: average score per event before Miami<\/p>\n 1. Red Bull Racing: 39.0 points per round (Verstappen: 22.0 ppr, P\u00e9rez: 17.0 ppr)<\/p>\n 2. Ferrari: 30.2 points per round<\/p>\n 3. McLaren: 19.2 points per round (Norris: 11.6 ppr, Piastri: 7.6 ppr)<\/p>\n 4. Mercedes: 10.4 points per round<\/p>\n But after Miami, P\u00e9rez\u2019s score rate fell off a cliff, taking the team\u2019s score rate with it.<\/p>\n 2024: average score per event from Miami onwards<\/p>\n 1. McLaren: 30.0 points per round (Norris: 16.6 ppr, Piastri: 13.4 ppr)<\/p>\n 2. Ferrari: 26.4 points per round<\/p>\n 3. Mercedes: 21.9 points per round<\/p>\n 4. Red Bull Racing: 20.7 points per round (Verstappen: 17.2 ppr, P\u00e9rez: 3.5 ppr)<\/p>\n McLaren\u2019s improved form benefited Norris and Piastri roughly equally, whereas Red Bull Racing\u2019s decline was borne almost entirely by P\u00e9rez while Verstappen attempted to carry the team on his own back.<\/p>\n P\u00e9rez\u2019s underperformance was directly responsible for the speed with which the team\u2019s 115-point lead over McLaren evaporated.<\/p>\n It took McLaren only 11 rounds to take the lead from Red Bull Racing, and it ended up defeating the defending constructors champion by 77 points, completing a 192-point turnaround.<\/p>\n Red Bull Racing couldn\u2019t even hold onto second place; it was usurped by Ferrari with four rounds remaining and went on to finish 63 points behind the Italian team.<\/p>\n With Verstappen still winning the title comfortably, Red Bull Racing became only the third team in history to finish third or lower in the constructors championship while fielding the drivers title winner<\/a>.<\/p>\n To say Red Bull Racing lost the championship in 2024 rather than McLaren won it does the orange-clad team a serious disservice, not to mention underrates the excellent car it built that season.<\/p>\n But clearly there was more to the season than just McLaren\u2019s rise.<\/p>\n Could McLaren realistically hope for Mercedes to suffer the same sort of implosion?<\/p>\n Cam Waters aiming for the Championship? | 01:03<\/p>\n WHERE THE PARALLELS END<\/p>\n The points picture is where the similarities between 2024 and today end \u2014 and it\u2019s not just because of P\u00e9rez either.<\/p>\n The deficits are of different magnitudes.<\/p>\n In 2024 McLaren trailed Red Bull Racing by 115 points with 18 rounds to go.<\/p>\n This year McLaren trails Mercedes by 163 points with 12 rounds to go \u2014 and we\u2019re assuming this is the peak of the deficit.<\/p>\n That\u2019s 41.7 per cent greater deficit to be closed in 33.3 per cent less time.<\/p>\n In 2024 the team required had to outscore Red Bull Racing by 6.4 points per round to pinch the championship. In the end it pulled it off by outscoring RBR by 10.7 points per round.<\/p>\n This year McLaren must outscore Mercedes by 13.6 points per round \u2014 a 213 per cent increase in the 2024 target and bigger even than the team\u2019s overperformance that year.<\/p>\n 2026: average score per event<\/p>\n 1. Mercedes: 35.8 points per round (Antonelli: 20.4 ppr, Russell: 15.4 ppr)<\/p>\n 2. Ferrari: 28.5 points per round<\/p>\n 3. McLaren: 19.5 points per round (Norris: 10.3 ppr, Piastri: 9.2 ppr)<\/p>\n 4. Red Bull Racing: 15.1 points per round<\/p>\n The turnaround in 2024 was already unprecedented. McLaren would have to take that to another level with this weekend\u2019s upgrade to have any chance of winning the title.<\/p>\n That\u2019s particularly true given Russell and Antonelli are a well-matched line-up, whereas Verstappen and P\u00e9rez were not. McLaren can\u2019t assume both its cars will at a minimum split the Mercedes drivers at any given race.<\/p>\n Kostecki DOMINATES in Townsville | 01:11<\/p>\n BUT THERE\u2019S HOPE<\/p>\n If it sounds unlikely, that\u2019s because it is.<\/p>\n But then again, 2026 is different to 2024 in other ways too.<\/p>\n