McLaren’s more dominant in Formula 1 right now than Red Bull has ever been, according to Mercedes driver George Russell.
Russell is never shy of a gloomy early season prediction, having previously predicted Red Bull “should win every race” after 2023’s season-opener. Only Red Bull’s nightmare Singapore weekend that paved the way for Carlos Sainz's victory proved him wrong with Red Bull winning all of the other 21 grands prix that year.
But Russell believes McLaren has raised the bar for dominance in 2025, beyond even where Red Bull set it in 2023.
He intimated that he thinks Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri won’t make the most of that car advantage in the same way Max Verstappen has, though.
“I think their car is definitely capable of winning every race,” said Russell, who'd already suggested last weekend that McLaren had such a margin it could already stop developing its 2025 car and focus on 2026.
“Their car should win every race but I don’t think they will win every race this year. Let’s see.
“The gap they have this year on everybody is bigger than Red Bull has ever had. But when Max was in that [2023] car he was pretty reliable every single lap he did every single run in Q3, throughout qualifying, never really a question.
“Hopefully we can be there to capitalise like we were at the [Melbourne] weekend, as that should have been a one-two for those guys.”
Russell added he believes Red Bull’s 2023 advantage to be “three or four tenths, [and] the advantage we’re seeing from McLaren right now is definitely bigger than that”.
Verstappen said he couldn't make such a comparison when Russell's comment was put to him.
"I always struggle to really answer that correctly, because it's impossible to say, right? Unless you have driven that car yourself," he replied.
But he agreed McLaren "are very far ahead" right now, adding: "They're super strong. I have a lot of respect for what they have done already last year and now they're very fast. Very all-round, good everywhere.
"That is just a fact now, how big the gap is or whatever is difficult to say."
Piastri called Russell's statement that McLaren's more dominant than Red Bull ever was "far fetched".
He added: "George is coming up with some funny things in the last couple of weeks. So we’ll see, just one race, it’s been a track that’s been competitive for us the last couple of years even when our car wasn’t even more dominant than a Red Bull [tongue in cheek] we’ll definitely go to tracks where we’ll struggle more.
"If he wants to write off his season after the first weekend then I’ll let him do that, but we’re very aware that Melbourne was an exceptional weekend rather than what we’re expecting to be the norm."
The 'trick' behind McLaren's superiority
Russell agreed with The Race’s assessment that McLaren’s advantage lies in its superior mastery of the Pirelli rubber, rather than a traditional downforce advantage.
“If you’re talking about trying to find that amount of laptime in downforce that isn’t going to happen in a season and it’s never happened in a season,” Russell said.
“They’re clearly doing something better than the rest, clearly substantially quicker than everybody when the tyres are getting hot.
“We saw that in the Bahrain test. We saw it in sector three in [Melbourne] qualifying, they were four tenths faster than everyone else in sector three. Same car they had in sector one and two, only difference is tyre overheating.
“There’s room for us to improve but…and we know we have room to improve but we don’t feel like there are masses of opportunities to improve in that region, it’s quite tightly controlled.
“So they’re clearly doing something pretty trick and that gap is huge.”
Russell doesn’t believe that trick will be stifled by the FIA’s clampdown on flexing rear wing that’s coming into immediate force from the Chinese Grand Prix: “If the TD was there in Melbourne they definitely would have won the race because they’re just so far ahead.”
A vulnerability?
Russell expects the tyre preservation that made McLaren so potent in sector three in Melbourne will be repeatable “at a majority of tracks” with a potential vulnerability elsewhere.
“They may struggle when it’s cold,” Russell pondered.
“They seem clearly better than everyone else at cooling their tyres and we saw this last year, Singapore very hot, street circuit, very challenging, they were well ahead of everybody else. Zandvoort another track of overheating. Then Vegas they were nowhere.
“I suspect on these outlier circuits they’ll potentially struggle but I’m sure they’ll have something up their sleeve to counter that because I think they’ll be pretty aware of where they’ll struggle.”
