McLaren winning the constructors’ title with six races to spare in Singapore was simply inevitable. That should not play down the achievement in any sense, it just underlines how dominant they have been this season.
At the end of 2024, they clinched the title for the first time in 26 years, in a close battle with Ferrari that lasted until the final race in Abu Dhabi. It marked an incredible turnaround for a team who, early in the previous season, had sometimes found themselves at the back of the grid.
Many of the elements for this season of domination were already in place: Andrea Stella, the team principal, who refuses to take credit for his own work but is seen by many at McLaren as the key to getting their talent in the correct positions, and their driver line-up, which is undoubtedly the strongest on the grid. But the crucial element this time was the design of the car — the MCL39.
The 2025 season is the final one using the present set of regulations, which have tended to lead to close racing. Yet, at times, it has been a McLaren procession.
Take Miami, at the start of May, as an example, where the unique paddock at the Dolphins stadium was filled with staff from various teams, shocked at just how easily the two papaya-liveried cars had destroyed the rest of the competition. Everyone else simply could not compete.
Around that time, there were some whispers that McLaren must be bending the rules. Red Bull were particularly suspicious of their rivals’ ability to cool their tyres, but while they were the most vocal, they were not alone in raising their eyebrows.
Yet, the truth was that, while many other teams had made only a small step over the winter — and in the case of Ferrari seemingly gone backwards — McLaren had truly made a sizeable leap forward. This was clear from the first long runs of winter testing in Bahrain.
Stella explained, on Sunday evening, exactly how they did it. “The MCL39 can be summarised — if we need to do it — with one word: innovation,” he said. “There was lots of innovation applied to what was last year’s car, and this required quite a bit of bravery at some stage of the 2024 season to commit to the amount of changes that we have applied.
“This involved [the different design of] suspension, cooling, a little bit of the aerodynamic philosophy, many areas. I would say pretty much all the fundamental areas, even the interaction of the car with the tyres, which has been a topic for a few months at the start of the season.”
The lack of condemnation from McLaren after Norris made contact with Piastri left the Australian furious in Singapore
CLIVE MASON/GETTY IMAGES
McLaren knew that their decision to opt for two strong drivers, without a clear No1, would give them their best chance of dominating in the constructors’ championship, and so it has proved.
Yet it also gives them an almighty headache — even after any celebratory hangovers have cleared — for the remainder of the season. Their two drivers are separated by 22 points at the top of the individual standings, and Oscar Piastri’s furious radio response to Lando Norris colliding with him at turn 3 of the Marina Bay Circuit felt almost as inevitable as McLaren’s team success.
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When McLaren won the title in Abu Dhabi last year, they jubilantly boarded a flight to Bahrain (Mumtalakat, the Bahraini sovereign wealth fund, is a majority shareholder) to celebrate with the Crown Prince, turning all of the lights in Manama — the capital of Bahrain — papaya.
When Stella boarded his 9am flight back to London on Monday morning from Singapore, it was in rather different circumstances. He knows at the factory this week there will be a review of the incident, and whether their Papaya Rules of engagement between their drivers were indeed upheld when they made the decision not to ask Norris to give the position back to his team-mate.
The most important rule at McLaren is that their drivers will be free to race, but they must do so fairly and cleanly. Piastri felt that Norris making contact with him was not exactly adhering to that. Norris argued it was not intentional, but a result of him clipping the back of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull beforehand. There is a world in which both of those viewpoints are correct, but that will still leave Piastri feeling hard done by.
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The hastily organised championship celebrations left Norris, 25, on the podium in Singapore with his team, having finished third, while Piastri, 24, could be seen glancing at the screen alone in the media pen. That was not the fault of McLaren — he finished fourth so was fulfilling his usual media duties — but it was hardly ideal optics. He later took part in celebrations with the rest of the team.
A second consecutive constructors’ title — their first back-to-back crowns since 1991 — has been secured. How McLaren manage an increasingly controversial drivers’ title battle, however, could yet decide whether their harmonious approach can produce more results in the future, or if their greatest strength will ultimately prove to be their downfall.