The first five races of the season have allowed us to draw initial conclusions about the work done by the teams over the winter: McLaren confirms its status as the car to beat and is chasing a second consecutive Constructors’ Championship, a feat not achieved since the four titles between 1988 and 1991. The Max Verstappen – Red Bull duo is a strong contender, despite the RB21 from Milton Keynes being a car that is particularly weak on rear-limited tracks, where tire management is crucial; then there are Mercedes and Ferrari, with Ferrari undoubtedly being the big disappointment of the start of this season, struggling with a lack of rear downforce and some inherent characteristics that prevent the Scuderia from being competitive on Saturdays, which has become crucial with the increased effect of dirty air when chasing rivals. The upcoming races will set crucial choices for the championship, particularly in the drivers’ standings: will Ferrari, Red Bull, and Mercedes attempt to chase a McLaren that is so strong technically?
McLaren: The MCL39 is an excellent car overall, but it is not a perfect package
So far, McLaren has collected 188 of the 230 available points: of the 42 points lost, most are attributed to driver errors. Oscar Piastri started the season with a ninth place in Australia, then recovered and gained 33 points over 4 weekends against his teammate Lando Norris, who had two horror weekends in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia due to errors in Q3. If the drivers’ championship is still open, it is largely thanks to the two papaya drivers, the Achilles’ heel of a very strong but not perfect team. Red Bull’s long-term confidence is not entirely unjustified but relies heavily on the effect of TD018, which, however, is not something feared at Woking.
Rob Marshall’s car has aerodynamic downforce that is easy to extract in various conditions, only rivaled by Red Bull’s, but with much better balance at all speeds and on every track. The technical directive introduced in China regarding the “mini-DRS” seems to have slightly affected the aerodynamic efficiency of the MCL39, costing some km/h in the second half of the straights, but its excellent traction capabilities minimize the effects of these losses, even on tracks like Jeddah. The long cover allows for “choosing” strengths based on track characteristics, but typically, the car shines in low-speed sections where it can exploit a significant advantage in acceleration. While awaiting the key test in Spain, McLaren is expected to be in great form for the trio of races in Miami, Imola, and Monaco.
Red Bull: The RB21 carries many flaws from its predecessor, but knows how to strike where McLaren struggles
The issues with simulation-to-track correlation make upcoming developments very unpredictable, but Christian Horner’s team has nothing to lose at this stage of the season: the RB21 is a car with two faces, very competitive on front-limited circuits but struggling on tracks with strong rear limitations. The combined gap in Melbourne, Suzuka, and Jeddah is two tenths compared to McLaren, a deficit that nearly doubled in Shanghai and Bahrain. However, the haul so far includes two pole positions and one victory, which could have been two if Verstappen had a better start in Jeddah. Additionally, it seems that the Dutchman can rely on teammate Yuki Tsunoda‘s help, at least during critical qualifying phases. The planned updates between Miami and Imola aim to widen the operational window of a very competitive car when set up correctly but easily struggles on less ideal tracks. With the arrival of the European summer season, having a car capable of managing tire wear during races will be crucial to staying close to McLaren, and the team at Milton Keynes is confident Max Verstappen can do the rest.
Mercedes: The W16 is more predictable and consistent, but performance remains an enigma
George Russell’s great start to the season highlighted the quality of the Mercedes project: compared to the other ground-effect cars designed at Brackley, the W16 has clear strengths and weaknesses, and for drivers, it is a more predictable car to drive in both qualifying and races, despite retaining many of the strengths and weaknesses of the previous model.
The overall efficiency is good, and at medium and high speeds, the car works very well, being the fastest on the high-speed sections in Jeddah. The weakness so far has been low-speed corners, where Russell lost pole position in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, there is a significant drop in competitiveness between qualifying and the race: from Saturday to Sunday, the W16 loses between one and two tenths in direct comparison with other top teams, a trend also seen last season, though not overly negative because, in today’s F1, track position has become critically important again.
Ferrari: The core issues of 2024 remain, and qualifying severely limits the SF-25
The main problem to correct between 2024 and 2025 in order to compete on all fronts was improving qualifying performance, an objective indirectly achieved in the second half of last season with updates in Monza and Austin. However, after five races, we can conclude that this goal has not been met: the SF-25 still struggles to find peak performance, especially with new softer tires, and it is the fourth-best car in qualifying – four tenths behind McLaren and a tenth on average behind Red Bull and Mercedes. Starting from the second or third row, fully extracting the car’s performance becomes very difficult: in Jeddah, it was obvious how Charles Leclerc’s pace improved once George Russell’s pit stop allowed him to push in clean air. As with Red Bull, the upcoming corrective updates will play a crucial role in the outcome of the season, but so far Ferrari has paid for not having maximized what it could have achieved due to mistakes in the first two rounds. The dream of a title seems to be fading, and the 17th year without a title in Maranello draws closer.
Leave a Reply