McLaren continues to dominate the 2025 F1 season, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri topping the time sheets in both Hungarian GP practice sessions. Team Principal Andrea Stella says he is ‘surprised by this level of competitiveness’.
In Friday’s Team Principal press conference, Stella was asked what sets this year apart from other dominant seasons he has experienced, like those during his time at Ferrari. With 10 wins in 13 races in 2025, the McLaren MCL39 remains the car to beat.
“It’s always difficult to compare across seasons. In this case, we are comparing across teams, and even myself, I was in a very different role. So my field of view, my perspective was very different. But if I had to pick a couple of features of the journey at McLaren, I would say the rate of progress that we have had in a couple of years is in itself pretty unique. Possibly the rate of progress itself was even faster than what we experienced at Ferrari in the very competitive times.
“The second one is that there are no superstars. It’s like a proper team journey, and this includes even the drivers. So, I would say these are the two main features that are peculiar of the journey that we are having at McLaren right now.
Aggressive approach to innovation
“I’ve been surprised by this level of competitiveness. When last year we discussed how much effort we wanted to put in improving the 2024 car, we wanted to be very ambitious. We wanted to clear the “going into race weekends, you never know who’s going to win” situation last year. And we thought we needed to do a little bit more than the normal development. So how do we do that?
“We embraced a very aggressive approach to innovation. The MCL39 is a very innovative car. From an engineering point of view, we’ve been nervous as to whether some solutions whether we were actually in the condition to deliver them. But then when we looked at the lap times and numbers in simulations, we thought that wouldn’t be enough. At the start of the season, effectively it wasn’t enough. So, there’s a factor that has happened during this season, which is the car has actually been upgraded.
“I think it was more noticeable in the past because we were coming with one-off upgrades, and they were in themselves very noticeable. But actually, even if we consider the last three, four races, there’s been quite a lot of new parts that have been added. If we add all these in a single incidence, then we would say, “Oh, McLaren has a big upgrade.” So, I think this has helped a lot in creating this trend and finding that in the last three races, we were definitely very competitive.”
Two-horse race between Norris and Piastri
However, Stella does not agree that his drivers are in a two-horse race for the Driver’s Championship. He stated that he only agrees with the mathematics.
“Once mathematics tells us that’s the case, then I’ll change my answer.”
The Italian went on to say that the team should only play a positive role in the championship battle. And this is by providing both drivers with a fast and reliable car that allows them to fight evenly. Norris and Piastri are so close in terms of performance and points. So it is crucial for the team to treat both drivers fairly.
“First of all, we need to make sure that we as a team only play a positive part. That is to give Lando and Oscar a fast car that in all conditions can fight for the win. We don’t play a role instead in which we have reliability factors, operational problems, pit stops that may bias the allocation of points one way or the other. This is the responsibility of the team.
“When it comes to Lando and Oscar, I think this is very much to do with the execution because they are very close. It’s a matter of details in the execution from all points of view: race craft, driving, penalties, and then consistency. Consistency—just being good at every single event—is something that Lando and Oscar have been very good at. But I think this is going to be more and more important, especially as the finish line gets closer.”
The Hungarian GP is the final race before the summer break, and McLaren look set to take yet another win after a clean sweep of Friday practice.
