What happened to 'insane' McLaren pace advantage
The "insane" pace that McLaren showed at the start of the Saudi Arabian GP weekend made Red Bull all the more surprised that it was a match for F1 2025's benchmark in the race itself
Max Verstappen was surprised to be so competitive with McLaren driver Oscar Piastri during the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, after what Red Bull Formula 1 team boss Christian Horner described as "insane" practice pace.
Verstappen lost a possible win in Jeddah after earning a five-second penalty for going off-track and gaining an advantage at the first corner of the race trying to defend the lead from Piastri.
Serving that penalty at his pitstop dropped Verstappen behind the McLaren, which had struggled to sit behind the Red Bull in dirty air in the opening stint but was expected to then cruise clear given McLaren's superior tyre management.
That didn't happen and instead, Verstappen actually got closer to Piastri before the end of the race, finishing just 2.8s behind - having been more than half a minute adrift in Bahrain a week previously.
"I was very positively surprised, to be honest, because on Friday, it was very, very tough," said Verstappen.
"And it didn't matter what I was doing in terms of driving, management, the tyres would just fall off.
"The car was a lot nicer [in the race]. Still limitations, but it was much more promising.
"And actually, at one point when I started to pull away again, I was quite surprised, positively surprised.
"We have to stay a little bit calm because this track doesn't have a lot of deg, and we know that when we go to tracks where there's higher deg, we just struggle more.
"We still need to work on that. But the changes that we made also worked. So I'm very pleased with that."
This was a surface and layout that Red Bull thrives on - with lower degradation, and high- and low-speed corners rather than medium - plus a track that Verstappen could make more of a difference at.
However, beyond its own performance improving, Red Bull suggested McLaren had come back closer to Red Bull and Ferrari - with Mercedes the outlier this time given how much it struggled, rather than McLaren being the odd one out by being so much better.
Asked by The Race if Red Bull had done a better job at this track or if the McLaren tyre advantage disappeared, Horner said: "I don't know. I think we've done a better job. Certainly their pace in the heat on Friday was insane so that looks normal [in the race].
"Even compared to a Ferrari, the Mercedes has degged quite a lot, Leclerc had arguably very good deg and pace as well. That's encouraging."
Asked if anything could have changed to explain this, Horner replied: "That's for you guys to go and do your own homework."
One obvious caveat is that McLaren's pace on Friday could have been exaggerated by various factors, which created a misleading image.
Its car seemed to be in a better set-up window, for example, given how much Verstappen had complained about the tyre management on his RB21 in FP2.
Plus, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella indicated that it is common for his cars to show more of their full potential in practice, presumably by running less fuel and higher engine modes.
After the race, Piastri admitted Verstappen was closer than expected but felt the McLaren still had an edge. The fact Piastri set a significantly faster personal best lap on the final lap indicated he had been holding something back although it was only marginally quicker than Verstappen's own best.
"I think our car was still quicker," said Piastri. "It was difficult to be in dirty air.
"Max was quicker than I expected for sure in the race.
"I thought over one lap it wasn't a huge surprise to see Max quick, but in the race, I wasn't expecting to struggle so much at the end of the medium stint, that's for sure.
"So clearly we've got some work to do. Our car is still very good, but when you look at the layout here compared to Suzuka [where Verstappen won], it's the most similar so far, and it's been the two where Max and Red Bull have been closer.
“We still have an advantage. I don't think it's as big on surfaces like this and layouts like this, but we still have a very strong car at the moment."
