A startling claim from Zak Brown! McLaren has won five out of the six Grand Prix in 2025, but the American asserts that the team rarely had the fastest car. During the past race weekend in Miami, drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris crossed the finish line with a thirty-second lead. Brown praised his team for their dominant performance, but simultaneously stated that McLaren has never had it easy.
On paper, the Miami GP was so far the most dominant race of the year for McLaren. Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris seemingly had little trouble keeping up with the competition and eventually crossed the finish line with a comfortable margin. Max Verstappen made a desperate attempt to halt the papayas, but eventually admitted that he was just trying to have a bit of fun; in reality, he was ‘completely hopeless’ against McLaren.
Despite McLaren’s strong start, Zak Brown would like to downplay the lead. The CEO suggested that the team did not have the fastest car in three of the five races they won. “I know it’s five out of six races, and technically that’s very dominant,” Zak Brown told the media in Miami. “But I can tell you – since I was on the pit wall during the victories – that this (Miami, ed.) was clearly the first one we could really control.”
‘A Long Way to Go’
“The race in Australia had challenging conditions,” Zak Brown reflected on Lando Norris’s first victory of the year. “In those other three races, we didn’t even have the fastest car. We just did very well. There are still many Grand Prix ahead of us, so as great as it is to see such a lead here, we take nothing for granted. There’s a long way to go. This time last year, we were third in the championship. The team that was leading then, ended up third,” he referred to Red Bull. “That shows we’re not there yet.”
The question is what Zak Brown bases his statements on. So far, McLaren seemed to indeed have the fastest car – except perhaps for the Saudi Arabian GP. Then, Max Verstappen pulled away from Oscar Piastri and could have won the race, had he not received a time penalty. In Australia, McLaren built a substantial lead until a safety car appeared. During the subsequent race in China, the team finished with a margin of eleven seconds. The Japanese GP was won by Verstappen, but both McLaren drivers later stated they could have overtaken him in clean air. Finally, the team also had the fastest car in Bahrain; Piastri won there with a lead of fifteen seconds.
