It's the question no one thought they'd be asking back in March, yet here we are — smack in the middle of the 2025 F1 summer break. The papaya rockets from Woking are threatening to run away with the whole shebang before sunscreen season even ends. McLaren has been on such a tear, it's made Ferrari look less like a title threat and more like they're fighting Kick Sauber for 7th. The dominance has been so thorough that the championship conversation has shifted from if — to when.
Remember "Goldilocks
and the Three Bears?" McLaren does — and it's not settling for "just right." This team is scorching hot porridge — but what could happen if their porridge is cooled by an F1 mechanic with a dry ice blower? As it stands, McLaren is sitting pretty with a commanding 559 points in the Constructors' Championship, while their nearest competitor, and we use that term loosely, Ferrari trails with 260. That's a 299-point gap. With a "best case scenario" of 475 points left on the table for any one team to secure with the remaining races and sprints, the math is starting to look pretty grim for the Tifosi. In a perfect, almost comical, best-case scenario for McLaren — where they continue to bang out 1-2 finishes and sweep all the sprint races — they could mathematically clinch the title at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. For those flipping back through your calendars, that's race 17 of 24. They could be popping champagne corks while the rest of the grid is still figuring out their mid-season upgrades.
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Back To Reality
Alright, fine. Sure, McLaren's last 4 results were 1-2 victories, but a continuous string of top step finishes is about as likely as a politician admitting they were wrong. It just doesn't happen. Cars break, drivers make mistakes — ever hear of weather? So what's a more realistic, but still optimistic, scenario? Even if McLaren's performance cools off to just their season-average low end, the party is still on for an early celebration. Let's call this the "slightly less inevitable but somehow more inevitable" timeline. This is a working title, but bear with me here.
In this version, McLaren isn't scoring a perfect set every race, but they're still consistently out-scoring Ferrari by a healthy margin. If they maintain a strong, but not flawless, points advantage, the numbers point towards a championship coronation at the Singapore Grand Prix. Locking up the title under the lights, and heat, of the Marina Bay Circuit still gives them a whopping six races to spare. To put that in perspective, that's a level of dominance that makes some of Red Bull's recent seasons look like a tight battle. Maybe that second seat is important after all, huh?
The Total Meltdown Scenario
Now for the fun part. What would it take for McLaren not to win? We're talking about a collapse of epic proportions. Replacing their power units with old Rover diesels slow. A bottling so bad, it'd make WeWork's collapse look like a savvy business move. For Ferrari, or anyone else, to overcome such a deficit, they would need McLaren to suddenly remember what it was like to be, well, the McLaren of a few years ago. It would require a level of self-sabotage not seen since Ferrari's last strategy meeting.
Let's imagine a world where both McLaren's cars spontaneously disassemble on every formation lap. And if things really go off the rails? Picture Oscar and Lando going full sibling petty — if one can't have the Drivers' title, then dammit, neither can the other. Meanwhile, Ferrari would have to execute a flawless string of top finishes, a feat they've found increasingly difficult to achieve. Ferrari would need to average roughly 30 points per race weekend while McLaren scores a consistent zero. Obviously third place Mercedes can still be in the mix in this bizarro universe we crafted, but for brevity's sake we will just mention Ferrari.
This isn't just unlikely; it borders on the realm of science fiction. It would require horrible luck for one team and a miraculous, almost divine intervention for the other. So while it's possible for McLaren to lose, it's about as probable as finding a cheap boat that doesn't need any work. The rest of the grid isn't racing McLaren anymore — they're racing math. And math always wins.
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