McLaren have failed to win back-to-back races for the first time in 2025. They picked up just six points from a disastrous Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Oscar Piastri crashed out of both qualifying and the race, while Lando Norris couldn’t make any progress after starting seventh. Max Verstappen didn’t even have to think about the papaya cars as he cruised to a second consecutive win.
Verstappen remains 69 points behind Piastri with seven races to go. Unless there are more weekends like Baku, he’s highly unlikely to enter the championship picture.
Likewise, McLaren’s gargantuan 333-point lead means that the constructors’ title is already a formality. But the Baku weekend raises questions about the lingering vulnerabilities for a team who have been largely flawless in 2025.
Helmut Marko questions whether McLaren can cope under pressure
Helmut Marko wants to make McLaren ‘nervous’, and admits he’ll start to get excited if Verstappen remains competitive in Singapore, a much-different proposition.
Speaking to F1 Nation’s Tom Clarkson in the Baku paddock, he apparently described McLaren as ‘breakable’. He’s questioned how the team cope with pressure.
Last weekend was their first opportunity to seal the championship. Jacques Villeneuve says Oscar Piastri was driving ‘erratically’ as his dream started to come into view.
Even after his teammate’s shunts, Norris failed to capitalise. A slow pit-stop from his McLaren crew hampered him as he tried to chase down Yuki Tsunoda (P6) and Liam Lawson (P5).
“It’s been two bad weekends,” Clarkson said. “There was a mistake in the pit lane today, there was a mistake in the pit lane last time out at Monza as well.
“They’re making more mistakes as we get closer to the business end of this season. I was chatting to Helmut Marko a little bit earlier, and he believes that ‘McLaren are breakable if we put them under pressure’.”
Mercedes staff were surprised by McLaren’s pit wall blunder at Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Gary Anderson suspects McLaren have taken their ‘eye off the ball’ in the last two races. He wonders if complacency has crept in for a team who have been cruising.
They may have allowed themselves to start thinking about 2026 before closing out the two championships. McLaren’s execution will likely face a sterner test under the new regulations next year.
Mercedes strategists were surprised that Norris started on medium tyres, with George Russell going for the hard. The latter was able to progress from fifth on the grid to second.
Next year, McLaren are signing Will Courtenay, a long-serving Red Bull strategist, to lead that department.
Any criticism of the team must be measured given that, barring an extraordinary turnaround, they’re headed for their first championship double since 1998.