George Russell is convinced McLaren will start the new Formula 1 season as the team to beat following their performance in pre-season testing.
The Mercedes driver is hoping his car will prove less prone to severe swings in performance over the upcoming season.“The car’s feeling good,” he told the official F1 channel. “I think last year, even though we finished in the lowest [position] that we have done in the last three years, we won the [highest] number of races.
“I have confidence that this car is going to be slightly more consistent, not quite as peaky. So we might not see those mega highs like we saw in Vegas, and just sort of wiping the floor with everybody, but then hopefully we’re not going to see those lows as well that we saw at a few races.
“But we can’t kid ourselves. We know McLaren are without doubt the favourites right now. They look absolutely dominant and I’m sure they’re going to be the ones to beat.”
However McLaren driver Oscar Piastri was reluctant to raise expectations he could become Australia’s first home F1 race winner this weekend.
“I know what you want me to say, and everyone’s headline can be that, but we’ll see,” he said during an FIA press conference.
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“No one really knows what to expect. Testing went pretty well, but you don’t know where everybody stands.
“We’re pretty happy with how our test went, but as we’ve said, Melbourne is a completely different track to Bahrain. The weather is going to be different to Bahrain and different every hour, by the look of it.
“So it’s going to be an interesting weekend for sure, but I think hopefully we’re expecting to be somewhere up the front. Whether that’s right at the pointy end, we’ll wait until Saturday.”
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Philip (@philipgb)
13th March 2025, 9:26
If we look at the last 20 years of Mclaren we have 2005, 2007, 2008, 2012 and 2024 that they had cars which should have delivered championships. Out of 10 championships (drivers and constructors) they have 2 championships (2008 WDC, 2024 WCC)
So despite being the car to beat for 25% of championships they have 5% of the trophies. Compared with the success rates of Red Bull, Mercedes and even Ferrari over that period and if any team can drop the ball it’s Mclaren
I know past performance is no guarantee of future results but I can still see them arriving this season with the fastest car and coming away with nothing
Wer
13th March 2025, 9:52
Counting in “2024” is nonsensical, Philip. It is just so factually wrong!
RedBull had an overwhelmingly best F1 car in the first 1/3 of the season, with Verstappen winning 7 out of 9 first races.
Then McLaren got better, but Mercedes did as well – winning 3 out of 4.
Then McLaren might have had the just sligthly best car, but Ferrari got much better too and both teams won 2 races each.
And in the last 4 races RedBull came back strong winning half of those races.
If only Perez wasn’t utterly garbage, and scored as many points as, say, Sainz (5th in WDC), thus also taking points away from the other top cars, RedBull would’ve won the Constructors Championship by a landslide 200 points!
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
14th March 2025, 0:23
Saying 2024 makes perfect sense, it was the best car on balance across the year, even though red bull was by far the best early on, we’ve been keeping track over the season.
If anything, in that list I think 2005 is the odd one out, it wasn’t reliable enough to compete, speed isn’t everything!
And if I recall, 2012 was also similar to that.
Paul (@frankjaeger)
13th March 2025, 11:05
Here here, so glad someone is saying this too. So true. And @philipgb 2012 is not a season mclaren ‘should’ have delivered a championship. Seb was 100 points ahead! Should makes it sound like it was a foregone conclusion
Bob
13th March 2025, 11:58
Nor 2007 where they were DSQed from the WCC, and rumours were that they’d lose the 2007 WDC to save face from being DSQed there as well.
Then to compare to Ferrari? What titles have they won in that same time period? They had a car to fight for the title in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2017, 2018, 2022, and 2024. If they’re going to throw in 2007 and 2012 for McLaren, you can probably include 2019 in that list as well. How many of those did they win? I’d say 2 titles out of a possible 10 is a lot better than 3 out of 20. That’s double the opportunities yet they only scored 1 more title. Please tell me how that’s a better success rate?
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
14th March 2025, 0:28
I think 2012 is a bit excessive, alonso overachieved to get that close, but if you had 2 alonso or 2 vettel, then red bull would win by a landslide.
Philip (@philipgb)
13th March 2025, 13:19
The 2012 points don’t tell the story. The Mclaren was the fastest car over the course of the season. There have been multiple analysis of 2012 playing the what if games, and you factor in the long list of operational and reliability problems Mclaren had that year, they fumbled championships they had the car capable of winning
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
14th March 2025, 0:30
Ok, but my point is reliability is part of the car: both the 2005 and 2012 cars had a horrible level of reliability, you can’t just take a version of that car that is just as fast but also reliable and say they had the best car, the reality is they didn’t; on balance renault was the best car by a significant margin in 2005, and so was red bull in 2012.
Leo B
13th March 2025, 22:02
2005 McLaren had a car that could hardly finish a race without mechanical break down.
Not so dominant I would say.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
14th March 2025, 0:31
Indeed, it’s impressive they won so many races with how unreliable they were!