Stick this season with a fork.
First Verstappen and now Leclerc. An exceptional driver still can over-drive his car and magically take pole. Max and Charles (and sometimes Russell) have shown that Piastri and Norris are NOT the cream of the crop, but they’re good enough that they can exploit McLaren’s superior tire life to be fastest over 305 km.
In one respect, it’s just like 2014 thru 2020. Mercedes didn’t have the best drivers but their car was so superior, they didn’t need them. 14 races into 2025 and the non-McLaren teams have won three races. McLaren leads the WCC competition with more points than #2 & #3 COMBINED.
The difference now is that McLaren’s tire advantage isn’t institutionalized by the TR, as Merc’s 2014 engine superiority was. Nico Rosberg was the most unlikely WDC of my lifetime. He’d never come better than 6th in the WDC before the 2014 V-6 turbo-hybrid engines, but over the next three seasons he came second, second, and first. Over those same three seasons, Mercedes took 56% of all WCC points on offer.
In 2025, the other teams aren’t prohibited by the regs from catching up to McLaren, they just can’t figure out how McLaren is doing it.
Nothing to do but call 2025 done and dusted and wait for the 2026 stupidity to commence.
Last season IIRC in one of the Asian Races (Malaysia or chicom) they used a crane to get one of the Red Bull cars cleared from the track and the whole World saw the underside of the car.
Shortly after that the other Teams started to improve. RB began to make minor changes to the floor of the cars and what they were doing didn't seem to make much improvement.
🙏🇺🇸
🙏🏁