Is McLaren unstoppable? Our verdict after Chinese GP 1-2

Three races is hardly a long wait, but considering the advantage McLaren is enjoying at the start of 2025 it does seem a surprise that it took until the Chinese Grand Prix Sunday for its first 1-2 of the Formula 1 season.

But set aside Lando Norris's late brake drama and the manner in which it landed that result, as Oscar Piastri led Norris home, was emphatic.

So just how big an advantage does it have? Has Piastri proven he can be a title challenger? Are any of McLaren's rivals showing signs of a challenge this year?

Here's what our team think.

What's its real advantage?

Scott Mitchell-Malm

The scary thing about McLaren is I'm not sure we know what it's actual advantage is.

Over one lap, the trickiness of the car is making it tough for the drivers to hook things up. That occasionally lets others get closer and creates a false picture that there's a tighter battle going on than there really is.

But in both races now, in different conditions, and with different demands of the car and tyres, the McLarens just seem to be able to move clear with ease. 'Oh, now's the time we can push? OK, on it'. And suddenly they are a second a lap quicker.

The silver lining is which McLaren won this weekend and the manner in which it happened. Piastri needed to take a step in qualifying this year to take the fight to Norris, and his first F1 pole is a nice milestone in the bid to achieve that.

Converting it into a no-fuss win, on a track Piastri struggled to adapt to last year, was the best outcome for F1 on another weekend McLaren had zero real threat from outside.

Knife-edge traits might rescue rivals

Gary Anderson

You could say the writing is on the wall for McLaren to dominate the season. It's only two races in and for sure it is looking very good, but it is a long season.

In China, the hard tyre was very durable and it turned what everyone expected to be a two-stop race into a one-stop. That combined with the McLaren being probably the best car at looking after its tyres meant that it got a well deserved 1-2.

This season is again proving that qualifying and holding frontrunning positions from the start is critical: if you start squabbling when running in traffic the performance of both the car and the tyres drops off very quickly. The result of the sprint race was confirmation of that, with Lewis Hamilton winning from pole - the others just couldn't get close enough to challenge.

The only saviour for the other teams is that the McLaren is on a bit of a knife-edge on qualifying laps and it looks very easy for the drivers to make a mistake, so that might just mean that Piastri and Norris won't have the pleasure of always starting at the front.

The one thing that I find reassuring about them is how calm the drivers seem to be on the radio during the race - even when Norris had his brake problem he was calm. They seem to be able to let the car do the talking instead of trying to continually muscle it.

Tight qualifying margins still dictate terms

Ben Anderson

I don't know about 'unstoppable', but certainly it seems McLaren has started the season with a pace advantage of several tenths of a second - based mostly on superior control of the rear tyre temperatures.

But China was a front-limited race, thanks to much higher than expected grip levels overall - and as everyone was suffering with the same problem, we didn't see the McLarens stretch away to quite the extent they might have done had this been another rear-limited race.

But this only contained them, and so it came down to who did the better job in extracting single-lap pace in qualifying, followed by who could manage that outside front tyre the best and deal with the tearing of the surface as it slid across the smooth road and created a mismatch with the tyre's bulk temperature.

Piastri managed well, using the powerful advantage of running in clean air much like Hamilton's Ferrari enjoyed in the sprint race. Norris, who admits he's a bit weak fundamentally in dealing with a front limitation, suffered that bit more and duly had a more difficult race to second battling with George Russell's Mercedes.

Although the McLaren is quick, it's clearly not easy to extract that laptime - as we saw particularly with Norris in sprint qualifying. So it will still be about who can drive cleanest on a given weekend.

If Russell had taken pole and led the first stint, maybe we'd be discussing a surprise Mercedes victory here.

But no doubt Ferrari and Red Bull especially have started this season a bit behind the curve, and will probably need successful upgrades to bring them properly into the championship fight with McLaren.

Piastri's proving me wrong

Valentin Khorounzhiy

I have to be honest that I had significant reservations about Piastri's recent long-term extension on McLaren's side, because it felt like a top, top team not acting from a position of power.

The Australian hadn't had a bad 2024 by any means, but it helped that some of the worrying underlying characteristics - a pretty rancid qualifying record versus Norris and a tendency to notably struggle in tyre-limited races - were being masked by Piastri's opening-lap savviness and mental consistency.

The 2025 sample size is still limited, and Shanghai seemed to expose Norris more than most tracks will, but Piastri looks like he's taken a big step towards eliminating those concerns from last year. His strengths remain his strengths, his weaknesses look lesser than before.

I felt coming out of Australia that, if this is a McLaren-only title fight, circumstances gave Norris a massive points gift that he didn't really need anyway. But Shanghai has suggested he did need it - and Piastri now looks like both a genuine title threat and a very smart contract decision by McLaren.