After F1 tests, McLaren is the clear team to overcome the new season

Sakhir, Bahrain – for the first time in years, McLaren knew that he would not enter the new season of Formula one as a loser.

After his rise to win the title of the builders last year and the constant threat that Lando Norris was able to pose for Max Verstappen during the second half of last season, the team had an objective in the back in 2025.

And judging by its performance through three days of preseason tests in Bahrain, McLaren will venture to Australia in two weeks as the team to overcome what is anticipated that it is one of the closest seasons in the recent history of F1.

The McLaren development rate in the last two years has been surprising. Its execution of updates that began in mid -2023 in Austria took it from the back of the network to the front at the end of 2024, rarely doing a false step. While others hit the roof with their development before, or put pieces in the car that did not take a step forward, each update McLaren brought worked.

The McLaren consistent base built during the past year with the MCL38 was no reason to stop in the new year. Several changes led the director of the Andrea Stella team to fold the new “innovative” car in its launch two weeks ago. That impulse to unlock more performance, necessary in the middle of the closed fight in the front, always had the risk of a stumbling block.

That made the first comments of Norris and his teammate Oscar Piastri, that the new car felt similar to the last year in many ways, encouraging for McLare to listen. Another solid all -terrain of a car, one that could work well in all conditions and in all types of tracks, would be a good start. Norris’s return time was also established towards the end of the day one that Mercedes Chief Toto Wolff said he was “on a different planet.”

Norris’s career simulation at the end of day two really pointed out the rhythm of McLaren to the rest of the paddock, particularly compared to Ferrari and Mercedes. Through a period of 17 laps in the media, he constantly launched himself in the low range of 1: 35s, with his fastest return immersing himself in the range of 1: 34.9s. When Charles Leclerc began his career simulation for Ferrari in media about 40 minutes later, he averaged in mid -1: 35s before sliding towards the range of 1: 36 towards the end of the period.

On average, Norris was 0.25 seconds faster per lap than Leclerc.

Norris continued to find time when the fuel burned when he moved towards the hard ones, although running in C1 instead of the softer C2 specification for Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli. His second period was again a couple of tenths for return in what Leclerc achieved, 0.22s on average, before a period especially rapid in the 1: 32. LECLERC was not faster than a 1: 33.5s turn in his final period. More closely, Norris and Leclerc had a difference of 1.2 seconds in the average return time in the final period.

A member of the rival team, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect relationships, described Norris’s final effort as “powerful” and expressed hope that it was not a real reflection of where things are in the new season. As always, typical warnings of tests, such as not knowing the engine mode, apply.

There were other flashes of McLaren that we did not see other teams. At the end of day two, Norris brought together a fast and second sector twice, just to go back and not complete the return, instead of immersing himself in the wells. The same happened on Friday towards the end of the morning session, his final departure in the car before Melbourne.

Piastri was quite shy about the beginning of McLaren in the test at the last press conference of the Test Week on Friday, describing the tests as “a little up and down” before his final career in the afternoon session. The tests are never completely soft. Wednesday’s energy cut and some rains on Thursday morning had interrupted the race, while teams will always make mistakes with their configuration in the tests while they find the limits of their new cars. But the quiet confidence emanating from McLaren throughout the winter has been carried out this week in a way that did not work for many of his rivals. Vibrations are positive.

Verstappen and Red Bull were difficult to read in Bahrain. (Mark Thompson/Getty images)

Rewind 12 months, and it was Red Bull who left the tests with a clear advantage over his rivals, which later translated into the dominant start in the year in Bahrain. This time, it is not clear where that team is located in the front of the package, only that this test was not completely planned.

Neither Verstappen nor the new teammate Liam Lawson completed a complete race simulation, which makes it difficult to make comparisons with their data. Speaking on Thursday, Verstappen sounded tentatively satisfied with the progress made to undo many of the problems that made last year’s car so problematic for him during the second half of the season. He wanted to reserve the trial until after his full day at Friday, but he did not work as much as expected. Verstappen only achieved 81 laps all day (less than Piastri, Yuki Tsunoda and Esteban Ocon managed in noon), and did not administer more than 10 consecutive timed turns.

Pierre Wache, technical director of Red Bull, admitted that “it was not a test as soft as we expected”, and that the car “did not respond how we sometimes wanted” in the midst of his configuration experiments, pointing out his problems that go beyond the relative lack of milestones.

Much of the Pre -season Care Center has shone to Lewis Hamilton after his transfer to Ferrari, and if he could give him the opportunity to fight for the eighth world championship that longs. Hamilton’s enthusiasm and energy about Life in Ferrari has so far been contagious and continued throughout the week. While admitting that the team still had work to do, Hamilton said he felt more positive in a new car in years, a revealing sign of how difficult were the final seasons in Mercedes.

Hamilton could not complete a race simulation on Friday night after the team saw an “anomaly in telemetry” and decided to stop as a precaution. This means that his first career in the new Ferrari will not reach his debut in Australia. Until then, there are elements to refine. The management of the SF-25 still requires some work, a view shared by Leclerc, and it was not seen as stable as the McLaren or so fast during the race simulation.

Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari feel good with their test week. (Rudy Carezzzevoli/Getty Images)

Leclerc’s rhythm was more in line with that of Antonelli in El Mercedes, who embarked on a race simulation around a similar moment of the day, and passed much of the final period about three seconds from the Ferrari track. Leclerc licked about two tenths on average in the media, but Antonelli was only 0.03s of the first hard season, and in fact a tenth of secondly for faster turn in the second hard period.

The most encouraging fact for Mercedes is that there are no signs of the early concern that arose in the tests in each of the last three years. Hamilton and George Russell knew very early in the previous test weeks how problematic the car would be the car. Now? There is much more confidence, and the car seems much more predictable while looking at the track compared to previous years.

The career simulation numbers suggest that Mercedes are in dispute with Ferrari, something that could not exceed last last year, when he enjoyed large peaks and channels in performance with the W15. Andrew Shovlin, director of Trackside engineering at Mercedes, said that the first signs in which the team had “made good steps” to remedy the weaknesses of last year, but warned that it was “too soon to make a precise prediction of the competitive order.”

So before, that will not prevent the teams from analyzing all Bahrein’s data next week before starting the long trip to Australia. So well are the margins that the Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari group is difficult to properly evaluate. What is clearer of the tests is the passage in front of McLaren, which makes him the favorite to go to Australia.

His losing state is firmly one thing of the past. The challenge now for McLaren is to fulfill its encouraging beginning in the winter tests and make it count when the lights go out in Melbourne.

(Superior photo: David Davies/Pa images/alamy images/SIPA USA)