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Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have this year raced with a McLaren Formula 1 car so powerful that it is on the cusp of breaking the record for the earliest ever title win
There has only been one team in the Formula 1 constructors’ championship fight all year. And now the first opportunity has arrived for McLaren to make a successful teams’ title defence mathematically certain.
This weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix will be round 17 of the World championship, with seven more to follow before the end of the season including three Sprint races. McLaren head into the Baku race weekend with a 337-point lead – an advantage so significant they can realistically be assured of the title by the end of the action on Sunday.
Should they get the job done, it will set a new record for the earliest title win in F1 history, by number of rounds remaining. It is currently held by Red Bull by virtue of their dominant 2023 season, when the Max Verstappen-powered outfit were assured of the championship with six rounds to go.
To get the job done in Azerbaijan, McLaren will of course need to have another strong weekend themselves – but the situation is very much in their own hands. Mirror Sport has crunched the numbers.
What McLaren must do to win the 2025 F1 constructors’ title in Baku
Things are tight behind McLaren in the standings. Ferrari are in second place but just 20 points ahead of Mercedes, while Red Bull are a little further back in fourth place with a 41-point deficit to the runners-up spot.
Because all three of those teams are still mathematically in with a shot of catching McLaren before the end of the year, to seal their success in Baku, the Woking-based outfit will need to outscore all of them by a specific number of points.
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As far as Mercedes and Red Bull are concerned, the task for McLaren is simple – beat them on track, and they are no longer in the running. Specifically, making sure Mercedes don’t score 12 more points than them, and that Red Bull don’t manage 33 more on Sunday, will be enough to confirm that McLaren can’t be caught by either.
When it comes to stopping Ferrari, there is a little more work to be done. McLaren need to out-score the Scuderia by nine points in Baku in order to make sure they cannot be caught by their current nearest rivals in the championship.
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It is a very likely scenario – McLaren have only failed to out-score Ferrari by such an amount in one of the 16 rounds held so far this year. That was at the Canadian Grand Prix in June, when Oscar Piastri finished fourth with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton behind him, but only because Lando Norris crashed out while trying to overtake his team-mate. Otherwise, on performance alone, McLaren would have again had both cars ahead.
Whether or not the title is secured in Azerbaijan, when McLaren do seal their constructors’ success, it will be the 10th in their history. That will place them second in the all-time list, eclipsing the nine won by Williams over the decades but still some way behind the 16 title amassed by Ferrari.
