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Welcome back to Prime Tire, where we’re wondering whether to bring our 10-gallon hat or our bolo tie to Austin next week for the U.S. Grand Prix. Just kidding. I wouldn’t know what to do with either of those.

I, Patrick, am from Dallas. Luke Smith will be along shortly. Let’s dive in.

It Finally HappenedMcLaren wraps up the title

This season was supposed to be tight. Remember that? “Last year of the regulations,” they said. “Everyone’s got the cars figured out,” they said. “Here we go,” they said.

Instead, McLaren tore up the script. On Sunday, it secured one of the more commanding F1 constructors’ championships of the modern era. As Luke wrote, it boils down to a big risk: a bold chassis redesign.

The payoff? A championship clinched with six races to spare, tying Red Bull’s 2023 record for earliest title win by rounds remaining.

Across 18 race weekends, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have been unstoppable:

12 wins
28 podiums
633 laps led — nearly 60 of all laps this year

McLaren’s engineering audacity has produced a car that’s fast everywhere, on every compound, and in every condition. Read how they did it.

Time for ‘gloves off’ between Norris, Piastri?

But now it’s time for the pleasantries between Norris and Piastri to end.

In Singapore, season-long friction between McLaren’s two championship favorites sparked on the opening lap. A brush of carbon fiber, a flash of temper on the radio – and a reminder that parity at the front comes with its own kind of pressure.

Norris’ third-place finish cut Piastri’s title lead to just 22 points.

Team principal Andrea Stella insists the “unity of the team” remains untouchable. Yet, Luke rightly points out that every lap between the two young stars has become a test of that unity.

With six races left, McLaren could still rewrite F1’s record book: most podiums, most fastest laps, even a new wins tally. But as history shows, dynasties are built not just on dominance, but on how teams survive success.

A few weeks ago, after the Italian GP, I argued that racing’s magic lies in its unscripted moments — not in McLaren’s choreographed version of “fairness.” I pointed to champions who valued pure competition over corporate harmony. The civility between Piastri, Norris and the team always felt too fragile to endure. Piastri’s punchy tone on Sunday sounded like the first real crack.

I’ll leave this with a line from Luke’s story:

Singapore again proved just how challenging it will be to keep things fair between Norris and Piastri until the end of the season, especially if the papaya cars remain so close together on the track.

An Accurate ReadYuki Tsunoda went backward

In all the post-race hubbub, I missed Yuki Tsunoda saying this:

“Probably the worst start I have ever done in my life … I didn’t have a place to go to be honest, every space I tried to go was covered by someone just randomly, so a terrible first lap.”

I went back to the onboard views at the race start to see what he meant. Tsunoda qualified 15th but started 13th after both Williams cars were disqualified on Saturday. And, yep, this is my traffic nightmare:

To recap:

Turn 1: Cut off and sandwiched
Turn 3: Cut off and forced to slow by rejoining cars
Turn 6 & 7: Couldn’t get past the Alpine, passed by Lance Stroll
Turn 9: Passed by Gabriel Bortoleto

By the time he crossed the line again, he had fallen to P17. Finished P12, though, so somewhat salvaged But surely points left on the table.

This got me thinking …

Who are the first lap aces in 2025?

Tsunoda’s miserable first lap made me wonder if this is a trend for him or not. We usually focus on the top five cars on the first laps, or race-altering collisions. Good or bad days are made by position swaps in the chaos, too.

I tabbed up all of the positions gained and lost by each driver on lap one of each race. I excluded the British GP — much of the grid dove into the pits to change tires on the formation lap, skewing the data.

Turns out, uh, yeah, Tsunoda has not been great when the lights go out.

Some insights from that graphic:

It’s obviously still skewed. If you start near the front all the time, you have nowhere to go but backward (and vice versa). Still, it speaks to McLaren’s dominance that neither Norris nor Piastri has lost more than two net spots all season.
Charles Leclerc is the best first-lap gainer among drivers on the top four teams. That has to make Ferrari fans crazy. If he just had a better car …
Lance Stroll: quietly been quite good early in races. That might be the most I’ve written about Lance Stroll all season.
 It’s not shocking to see two rookies (Isack Hadjar, Gabriel Bortoleto) bringing up the rear. Navigating the F1 first-corner madness is an art.

Anyway. There’s some #data for you. Let’s toss it to Luke, who spoke to another downcast driver.

Charles Leclerc is looking forward to 2026 (Mark Thompson / Getty Images)

Inside the Paddock with Luke Smith

What hope remains for Ferrari in F1 this year?

Charles Leclerc cut a fairly dejected figure in the media pen after Sunday’s race in Singapore. While George Russell dominated for Mercedes ahead of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull and the dueling McLarens, Ferrari was nowhere.

Leclerc had been managing a brake issue since the early stages of the race, leaving him to finish a lonely sixth, gaining a place after teammate Lewis Hamilton was hit by a similar problem in the final few laps. Leclerc also couldn’t keep Kimi Antonelli back in the final stint.

Leclerc was frank: Ferrari doesn’t have the car to fight at the very front. “It’s not easy, obviously, because you want to fight for better positions,” he said. “But at the moment, it just feels like we kind of passengers to the car, and we cannot extract much more.”

He made the outlook for the rest of the year sound bleak. “I don’t think there will be anything special,” Leclerc said, having seen his one real shot of winning this season pass by in Hungary. Barring something out of the ordinary in the last six races, a winless season — only the fifth in the last 20 years for Ferrari — looks likely.

There’s a frankness from the team about this season falling short of expectations, having come close to winning the constructors’ title last year. I spoke to team principal Fred Vasseur on Saturday for an upcoming feature on The Athletic, and he was very good at explaining the team-building process that has been ongoing at Maranello since he started in 2023.

One thing that struck me while speaking to Vasseur was his excitement over 2026, when the rule reset could change the picture completely in F1. For Leclerc and Ferrari, the hope will be its form ends up making up for the rest of this year being one of diminishing returns.

Yabadabadoo

Mercedes’ man puts F1 on notice again

George Russell, who famously crashed on the final lap in Singapore in 2023, delivered a flawless lights-to-flag victory on Sunday. Managing both the heat and Max Verstappen’s early challenge, he kept his Mercedes steady while rivals wilted. By the flag, he was 4.2 seconds clear — calm, precise, unshaken.

“I’ve said it for a while — I feel ready to fight for a championship.”

As Madeline Coleman wrote today, maybe it’s time to start wondering if he’s right.

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(Top photo: Guido De Bortoli/Getty Images)