McLaren is the team to beat this season. And, much to their fans’ delight, no one has been able to slow down the progress that the iconic British team has made this year. Oscar Piastri leads the driver standings, with his teammate, Lando Norris, in second place. McLaren’s domination of the Formula 1 world in recent years has led to the inevitable comparison with another F1 legend, Schumacher. McLaren’s rate of progress may be faster than Ferrari during their golden era, with German Formula One great Michael Schumacher, team boss Andrea Stella said on Friday.
McLaren’s Formula 1 boss has a history with the Maranello team
The Italian worked at Maranello with seven-time champion Schumacher as an engineer during that period, but told reporters at the Hungarian Grand Prix that he had been surprised by McLaren’s growth. The Woking-based team won the constructors’ title last season and are running away with both championships this year, with Australian Oscar Piastri and Britain’s Lando Norris fighting for the drivers’ crown.
McLaren has won 10 of 13 races so far and is a mighty 268 points clear of second-placed Ferrari in the team standings. In 2023, they were fourth overall and in 2022 fifth. “It’s always difficult to compare across seasons,” said Stella, who joined McLaren from Ferrari in 2015. “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 that is happening here at McLaren, I would say the rate of progress that we have had in a couple of years is in itself pretty unique. And possibly the rate of progress itself was even faster than what we experienced at Ferrari in the very competitive times.” – McLaren team boss Andrea Stella
Michael Schumacher set the standard for the Formula 1 teams
Schumacher won five titles in a row between 2000-2004, with the last one a particularly dominant season and Ferrari winning 15 of 18 races. Stella said McLaren had set out an ambitious programme when deciding how much effort to put into developing their car this season, with a new engine era coming in 2026 that could shake up the pecking order.
“We wanted to try and clear the ‘going into race weekends and you never know who’s going to win’ situation we had last year, and we thought we needed to do a little bit more than the normal development. We embraced a very aggressive approach to innovation. The MCL39 is a very innovative car.”
Stella said it had also been upgraded considerably since the start of the season. Piastri and Norris have called the title battle a two-horse race, with the Australian 16 points ahead of his teammate but a massive 81 points clear of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in third place, but Stella disagreed. “Definitely not. I only agree with mathematics. So once mathematics tells us that’s the case, then I’ll change my answer,” he said.
McLaren is well on their way to the drivers’ and constructors’ title this year
It would seem that the only other driver capable of slowing down Oscar Piastri is McLaren’s other driver, Lando Norris. The pair shared the podium at the Belgian Grand Prix as well as the Hungarian race this weekend. With Ferrari in shambles at the moment, and Red Bull consumed with the Christian Horner situation, McLaren has set itself a clear path towards both the drivers’ championship and the constructors’ title this year. With the summer break giving the teams a chance at a well-deserved rest, can McLaren pick up where they left off?
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