McLaren’s MCL39 has a sweet spot, and Max Verstappen has circled it in red: medium-speed corners. That, the reigning four-time champion says, is where the papaya car does its damage—and Red Bull’s Laurent Mekies isn’t disputing it.
Through the first half of 2025, McLaren turned the title fight into a private duel. Oscar Piastri leads the championship, with Lando Norris nine points back, and Verstappen now 97 adrift with 10 rounds to run. Four straight McLaren one-twos—three of them headed by Norris—have underlined who’s dictating the pace.
Verstappen’s diagnosis is blunt. “It’s definitely better on its tyres,” he said at the Hungarian Grand Prix. “You can clearly see that in the wet on intermediates… the tyre is more fragile, it overheats even faster. They definitely have that very well under control. At the same time, I think their medium speed performance is incredible compared to everyone else on the grid. The rotation they have on the front axle, without losing the rear, is… quite incredible to see. And that’s something that we have to try and achieve.”
That combination—mid-corner rotation with rear stability, plus a gentle touch on the rubber—has given McLaren latitude on strategy and authority on Sundays. When your car bites in the 140–200 km/h stuff and doesn’t cook its tyres, you control the race.
Mekies, Red Bull’s team principal, didn’t bother dressing it up. “Compared to McLaren, where they are killing us on most tracks, is the medium speed corners, period,” he said. “That’s genuine car performance for this sort of speed range. They have done a better job, so you go faster around the corner.”
Hungary, the final round before the break, was grim reading for the Milton Keynes team: Verstappen could only salvage P9, while Yuki Tsunoda’s run stretched to seven races without a point. Mekies reckoned the RB21 was out of its operating window in both slow and medium-speed sections, compounding the problem. In the Constructors’ standings, Red Bull sit fourth, 42 points behind Mercedes.
For Red Bull, the to-do list is clear. They need mid-speed grip without lighting up the rears, and a platform that keeps the tyre alive—especially on the intermediates, where McLaren’s edge becomes glaring. That’s not a setup tweak; it’s architecture.
McLaren, meanwhile, have built a car that’s devastating in the corners that define modern F1 lap time. If Piastri and Norris keep cashing that in, Verstappen’s chase for a fifth straight crown will require something dramatic after summer—either a breakthrough in Red Bull’s mid-speed balance or a rare stumble from Woking’s faultless 2025 rhythm. Right now, the stopwatch—and Verstappen himself—agree on where the fight is being won.
