George Russell has surmised that McLaren’s weakness in cooler conditions will represent rival teams’ best chance to beat the reigning Formula 1 champions in 2025.
McLaren has begun the campaign in a commanding position with Lando Norris winning the opening round in Australia preceding Oscar Piastri heading a 1-2 in China.
The Woking-based squad’s advantage in Melbourne provoked Russell to claim that the team could now switch attention to the rules reset in 2026 and take both titles.
However, Norris rubbished that assertion as he insisted that there will be circuits where McLaren’s 2025 car, the MCL39, will struggle more relative to the competition.
Norris highlighted that McLaren’s least competitive outing once it had updated its 2024 car was in Las Vegas when cold temperatures ensured grip was at a premium.
“We were good last year, especially in the second half of the season, but Vegas was woeful. In fact, we were shocking,” Norris told media including Motorsport Week.
“There are other tracks along those lines where we did struggle quite a bit.
“We’ve definitely made our car much more balanced across all types of circuits – high speed, low speed, high downforce, low downforce. We’re competitive at most.
“But these low grip tracks like Vegas, we really struggled. It highlighted our issues with the front of the car – the graining, the lack of rotation.
“We know that, though. We know where we’re going to struggle.”
Russell assesses where McLaren could be beaten
Russell, who prevailed in Vegas with a 43-second gap to Norris in the leading McLaren, agreed that such circumstances are where McLaren could become vulnerable.
“I think they’re going to be an advantage in the majority of tracks,” he assessed. “They may struggle when it’s cold.
“To be honest, they seem clearly better than everybody else at cooling their tyres.
“We saw this last year at Singapore – very hot, street circuit, challenging, they were well ahead of everybody else.
“Zandvoort as well, another track of overheating, but then, in Vegas, they were nowhere.”
Has McLaren solved primary weakness?
However, Russell suspects that McLaren has made progress in that department to remedy the troubles that the MCL39’s predecessor experienced in such conditions.
“So I suspect, potentially on these outlier circuits, they potentially will struggle,” he continued.
“But I’m sure they’ll have something up their sleeve to counter that because I think they’re going to be pretty aware of where they may struggle.”
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