MCLAREN Racing heads into Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix as F1’s ones to watch, the papaya-drenched team that just may be the ones to finally dethrone Red Bull and Max Verstappen.
Red Bull and its Dutch driver have had ironclad grips on both the drivers championship and the constructors title for best car since Verstappen won his first title in 2021. Verstappen now has three consecutive titles and currently leads the driver standings; Red Bull has back-to-back constructors titles but, headed into the weekend, no longer leads the standings.
McLaren took the top spot with Oscar Piastri’s win last Sunday. Coupled with Lando Norris’s fourth-place finish, McLaren is now the constructors leader for the first time since 2014. McLaren last won the constructors’ championship in 1998.
McLaren starts the weekend in Singapore with a 20-point lead over Red Bull, which had led the carmaker competition since 2022.
“I think we’ve got as good a shot as anyone,” Zak Brown, the chief executive of McLaren, boldly declared last weekend at IndyCar's season-ending race.
He’d watched Piastri win and McLaren move to the top from Nashville, Tennessee, and even with the big-talking American half a world away, McLaren still managed to make tongues wag at the the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
McLaren arrived in Baku and admitted it would prioritise Norris and the driver championship over Piastri for the final eight races of this season. Norris trails Verstappen by 59 points in the standings, and Piastri certainly accepted the team order in stride by winning the race.
“Obviously no racing driver wants to compromise their own race, so of course he doesn’t love it, but he’s a great team player, totally understands, also knows the role could be reversed in the future,” Brown said of Piastri being given the wingman role for the remainder of the season.
“Also, not totally out of the question, it can be reversed later this year. If Lando goes out and has a couple of DNFs, Oscar goes out and wins a couple of races — all of a sudden,” Brown shrugged. “So I think [Piastri] recognises that what goes around comes around, and it can very much come around his way.”
Norris and Piastri have combined to win two of the last three F1 races for McLaren, while Verstappen hasn’t claimed victory since the Spanish Grand Prix on June 23. While the team has said it wants Norris to dethrone Verstappen, Brown knows it is a long shot unless Norris can start hammering away large chunks of Verstappen’s lead every race.
In Baku last Sunday, Verstappen finished one spot behind Norris in fifth and Norris only gained three points on the champion.
“Lando made some points, but he needs to double the amount of points he got [in Baku] every race to catch him,” Brown said. “I think that’s a tall order, but we’re gonna try.”
Red Bull’s dominance has been so dramatic that Brown doesn’t even consider the team to be the top rivals for best constructor this year.
“I think Ferrari has showed how quick they are, so I actually think Ferrari might even be a bigger threat than Red Bull as we sit here right now because I think Ferrari will be really strong in Singapore,” Brown said.
Red Bull between Verstappen and Sergio Perez won 38 races in 2022 and 2023. Verstappen through 17 races has seven wins this year, but Perez is winless.
Brown praised McLaren’s rise under team principal Andrea Stella, who was praised as “a wonderful team boss” by Brown.
“Andrea and the leadership team have been able to unlock the potential and the people,” Brown said of his young team's turnaround. McLaren is one of racing's most popular teams globally, and Brown has been clawing them back toward the top-tier of F1 after a long drought.
Free practice one begins at 10.30am BST tomorrow, with free practice two following soon after at 2pm.
