Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has expressed that McLaren “humiliated” the opposition with the team’s pace during the closing stages of the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix.
McLaren’s domination in 2025 continued as the campaign restarted at Zandvoort, with Oscar Piastri converting pole position to clinch the team’s fifth successive win.
However, the Woking-based squad was denied another maximum points haul as Lando Norris retired from second with a technical problem with eight laps remaining.
Norris’ stranded car triggered a Safety Car that allowed Max Verstappen to change to Soft tyres, a prospect that McLaren boss Andrea Stella had highlighted pre-race.
But while Piastri had appeared vulnerable on the Hard compound, the sole remaining McLaren opened up an immediate cushion at the restart to close out the victory.
Wolff, whose Mercedes team scored 12 points as George Russell brought a damaged W16 home in fourth, has conceded that McLaren embarrassed the competition.
“Well, we’re in a bit of a difficult situation because how can you be happy with a P4 and maybe a P6 before the penalty [for Kimi Antonelli]? That’s really not great,” Wolff admitted to media including Motorsport Week.
“I think this weekend, between Max, the Ferraris and ourselves, it’s a little bit balanced at the moment.
“Max was the quickest, but Ferrari was just the same, I would say. So that’s not satisfying.
“You can see at the end the McLaren on the Hard tyre versus all of us on the new Soft. This is a humiliation for everyone. Now you have the headline, right?”
Ferrari counters Mercedes verdict on McLaren dominance
Ferrari counterpart Fred Vasseur disagreed with Wolff’s assessment, however, as he cited that McLaren’s advantage was consistent throughout the entire 72-lap race.
“It’s not only the last stint,” he pinpointed.
“I think that if you have a look at the rest [of the] race, in the middle of the second stint, I don’t know if they decided to push or not, but they were also much faster than everybody.
“I think they managed the first 10 laps of the second stint before the VSC (Virtual Safety Car), and when they decided to push, they were miles away.
“Clearly, they are a step ahead in quality, but much more than this in the rest. Humiliation? I won’t go so far with it.”
Why McLaren wasn’t concerned about late restart
McLaren boss Andrea Stella revealed the manner in which Verstappen’s threat on the Softs petered out in the opening stint alleviated concern on the McLaren pitwall.
“I think the fact that everyone went on Soft is because they didn’t have any Hard because it was only McLaren and, I think, Aston Martin that had the two Hard tyres,” he explained.
“In our view, the Soft tyres would have been good for a shorter stint. I think we saw already in the first stint that, despite that Verstappen was on a new Soft, the new Soft was good for a few laps and then it exposes you to cars that run harder compounds.
“We were quite happy with the Hard tyres. Here, the Hard tyres were still a relatively grippy compound in this kind of circuit, so we were not very nervous and we thought that going on the Hard tyres was the best choice.”
READ MORE – McLaren explains how F1 Dutch GP weekend characterised Oscar Piastri’s improvement
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