McLaren has the pressure of top billing in 2025 - can lessons from its 2024 mistakes help?

In the midst of 2024's cut-and-thrust, as margins between each Formula 1 team were abraded away by the course of development, McLaren found itself benefitting from a precipitous rise.

If you're being charitable, one might even suggest that the sudden emergence at the front had perhaps confounded the team's initial expectations - especially as the narrative in the early season involved Red Bull repeating its 2023 dominance...

It had been a long time since McLaren was in a winning position; it last was on the top step of the podium in 2021, but hadn't won more than one race in a season since 2012. Hundreds of people working at Woking would never have experienced a race win before, let alone as part of the McLaren team.

PLUS: How McLaren went from back to front in 18 months

Some were scornful of the notion that a team needed to 'learn to win again', particularly as McLaren was castigated for taking too many risks and, simultaneously, not enough. A split-second call at Montreal didn't work out in its favour, Lando Norris fluffed a handful of starts over the season - Barcelona, Hungary, and Zandvoort being the most notable - and team order decisions almost backfired spectacularly at the Hungaroring.

In essence, mistakes during the middle third of the season were not only too common, but also subject to a very public audience. But they were also necessary mistakes, and McLaren may very well be glad to have made them by the time 2025 ends.

It feels like a very LinkedIn thing to say, doesn't it: that you learn more from your failures than your successes. You'd expect that sort of trite commentary nestled between declarations of waking up at 4am to hit the gym, while simultaneously checking emails and doing 'an Eyeball Paul' with kale, turmeric, and ginger shots, but it's accurate: to learn how to achieve something, you must also learn how not to do it - at least, as long as you're self-reflective.

Few would argue that team principal Andrea Stella does not fit that mould. The loquacious Italian is not afraid to offer his candid reflections of McLaren's fortunes - note that he rarely refers to mistakes in his media interviews, but points only to "opportunities" where the team may improve. He knows that processes aren't properly tested until a win is on the cards and, despite McLaren's ever-improving MCL38 entering victory contention over the course of the year, the individuals had to dig a little deeper to get more out of themselves. It's one thing to win occasional races, but making sure one triumph is repeatable requires a lot more groundwork beyond simply having a quick car.

Stella has demonstrated himself to be someone who candidly reflects on races and learns from them

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Much of that is borne from momentum. Just as it looked like McLaren was able to build momentum and start putting together a winning streak, conditions or phenomena outside its control largely put paid to that. It nonetheless reeled off a string of impressive displays from Hungary to Singapore, with four wins in six races, but fluctuating form of Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes made the final furlong a bit harder to sink its teeth into. No wonder the drivers' championship challenge stuttered - although its ability to achieve the goal of 'maximising results' in the less felicitous races stood it in good stead for the constructors' crown.

Now, McLaren has a repository of what-not-to-do actions to equip it for 2025. Should the field remain split by barely a cigarette paper over the course of the year, these little pearls of wisdom will be invaluable in leveraging a slightly less-scant advantage. When should a team be bold with strategy, and when should it take a more laissez-faire approach? Prior experience will guide the way.

What a management executive would term as 'learnings' also goes beyond the strategy calls; its management of drivers will also take on more importance as Oscar Piastri closes the gap to Norris with his ever-growing bank of experience.

McLaren has been excellent at in-season development over the past two campaigns; the team appears to have an innate feeling for the right development paths for each car

The notion of "papaya rules" carried the air of a code of conduct for a private school boxing club - which in many ways it was, given the privilege to which F1 drivers are accustomed. Such fanciful language might be deleted for something that implies greater stringency, especially if a glut of 1-2 finishes are on the cards and McLaren's pitwall wishes to dissuade the two drivers from provoking internecine conflict.

Hungary is fresh in the memory, as is Brazil. Norris had repaid the Brazil sprint favour to Piastri in Qatar, but he might feel that he still has some credit in the bank to exchange for the Melburnian's assistance later on this year. It feels almost inevitable that further moments like that will unfurl throughout the season, and McLaren will have to face the problem of setting fair boundaries without upsetting either driver.

Conversely, McLaren has been excellent at in-season development over the past two campaigns; the team appears to have an innate feeling for the right development paths for each car, and the cars themselves seem to be receptive to new components and revised aerodynamics.

Keeping both of its drivers happy will be one of the challenges McLaren has to navigate this year

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar

It's not about quantity of parts; instead, Woking's finest have been diligently putting in the time to ensure that any packages it pulls together will stand a significant chance of delivering tangible lap time gains when it hits the track. Its regeneration of the McLaren Technology Centre's older facilities, including the delivery of a new wind tunnel, have started to bear fruit.

In that scenario, McLaren simply needs to retain that diligence and continue on the path it has followed to great effect. The team believes that it can balance 2025 with its development for 2026 but, if the expected closeness of the field comes to pass, then some progression will be needed if the team is to achieve a goal of winning the title in F1's 75th season.

Of course, if the MCL39 is a class apart from the rest, then such problems become much easier to solve - except, perhaps, the driver scenario. Strategy becomes a lot more linear when you've got 0.3s a lap in hand, as does the development process; a team can switch to 2026 much sooner in that regard, and the development benefits from the greater resources. In that situation, it'll all be about ego management - neither Norris nor Piastri will want to back down, and McLaren will want to give them the fairest crack of the whip before truly switching its focus to one driver.

After all, the team has been there before - and on multiple occasions. It might have had to learn to win again in the context of modern F1, but there's a wealth of timeless educational materials in the history books in how not to manage two championship-contending drivers. Stella et al. could do a lot worse than revisit the past and formulate its own plans to maintain team harmony.

Will the McLaren drivers maintain their smiles throughout the season?

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images