McLaren HUGE Upgrade Leaked: Good for Ferrari?! 😨

Alright guys, talking about the Formula One news, it's been clear for some time this year's championship will be decided between Mercedes and Ferrari. There is one team, however, that might not win the title, but they will likely shape who does on the constructors' and the drivers' side. McLaren won impressively in Hungary and they have far more further upgrades on the way and big packages at that than we initially expected. Could they be serious contenders at many races to come and decide in effect what this title looks like? I'd like very much to know your thoughts in the comments, hit the like button if you enjoy, subscribe if you're new as always. We're going to start here because driver market stuff is getting interesting. Fernando Alonso, where's he going to go if anywhere? There were rumours that he was talking with Flavio Briatore at Alpine, that would not be a huge surprise. If Alonso was going to go to Alpine, then Colopinto might end up back at Williams and Sainz would go to Audi and there were all sorts of other implications there. Some of that might still happen, you never know, but Alonso is probably going to stay at Aston Martin. This is a big rumour today and there are some sources that say that this is near enough a done deal at this point. Of course, Alonso has been rather let down by the performance of Aston Martin so far, so on one level he probably thinks, you know what, maybe I can squeeze them for a bit more money. So apparently he currently earns €30 million and he's telling the team, you know what, I will stay if you pay me €40 million a year instead, which I think would put him as like the third highest paid driver on the grid behind Hamilton and Verstappen. So certainly up there, but also he does have that kind of leverage with what Aston Martin have delivered this year compared to expectations and according to some rumours, this is basically a done deal and is potentially going to be announced in Zandvoort, so 21st to the 23rd of August, right? So a couple of weekends away, of course, the summer break will come to a close at that point. Apparently that could be when they confirm Alonso is returning or continuing at Aston Martin. This would be for a couple of years, right? I mean, this would be an additional two-year contract. Apparently that was a rumour I saw elsewhere anyway, that it was going to be a two-year extension and so he would drive 26 and 20 or 27 and 28 potentially. I guess we'll see what their car does next season. This is how this season looks so far. Poll sitters of this season so far compared to last year, and this is going to start the McLaren conversation of today. Obviously, last year, McLaren did a fair bit of sticking it on pole. McLaren, Max, George, Leclerc, occasionally. That was pretty much it last season and, well, a lot of papaya. This year, a lot of petrol is blue because Mercedes have dominated the season in terms of pole positions and in terms of points scored in large part, although, you know, it's remarkable you look at this list, you think, oh my God, Ferrari, what a shocker. The reality is Ferrari have been their closest challenger. Obviously in Budapest, Hamilton was 12 thousandths of a second away from pole, but it wasn't away from Antonelli this time, it was away from Lando. So it's definitely been on and the reality is that Ferrari are only about 70 points behind Mercedes, which all things considered is pretty impressive given the domination you see on the screen. The second half of the season, I don't expect to look an awful lot like the first. I think that Ferrari will surely get a pole or two at some point and McLaren are likely to continue this uptick in form. I'm still expecting a lot of blue here, but let's see, right, I'm not expecting Mercedes to absolutely dominate. This is what the championship looks like right now compared to what it did this time last year. So this time last year, after 11 rounds, Piastri was leading the way on 216, Norris was just behind on 201, you know, we were going to go to Zandvoort and then of course Lando had the failure and it looked like it was near enough a done deal. Of course it was not. Hamilton this year won 69, 50 points down, Russell 59 points down, Leclerc's a little bit further back from that. So that's your championship now. We can see where Lando and Piastri are. Realistically they're out of the fight, right, halfway through the season, even, you know, for Lando, 90 odd points behind. means it's going to be too much to catch that up in the second half of the season unless he goes on an absolutely generational tear, which is unlikely to happen. Same thing for Max. I mean, Max has also been a factor in these races on the podiums, disrupting the front runners and the real contenders and to be honest, Norris is very close to Leclerc right now. So I think Norris could very feasibly finish second in the championship, but I don't think he can win it from where he is. The only guys I think that can are Hamilton, Russell, and of course the championship leader. But as I'm going to discuss in a second, McLaren will have a part to play and maybe Max as well in who does win the title, who scores points, who gets points taken off them. And well, it could be good or bad. Last year though, the Papayas were dominating, Verstappen was third, it was Russell, Leclerc, Hamilton, Antonelli. Of course, lots of change on that front since then. And actually there were loads of teams in the top 10 last year. We had a Williams in there, we had a Haas in there, we had a Kick Sauber in there. Obviously this year is rather different. But speaking of Audi, we will get to that in a second. I wanted to start though with the championship leader. Antonelli did a couple of interesting interviews and one of these quotes I did find quite compelling. He talks about endurance racing with Max, first of all, and says, we've definitely talked about it. Max told me though to focus on this year and then we'll see. And Mercedes have told him the same thing. It's pretty funny really. Kimi's just, you know, he's young, he's fresh, he's excitable. And I think Bradley Lord was like, yeah, Kimi was talking about doing endurance racing with Max. We were like, what are you talking about? You've not won four world titles. You don't just get to do that, right? Like you're going to drive for us and you're going to focus on driving a Mercedes Formula One car. Then maybe once you've won a few titles, we can think about letting you have some fun. So that's, I think, Mercedes' perspective. Antonelli may see it differently. He also commented on 2021 and said, of course, it was painful for us at Mercedes, but ultimately they both deserved it. They both drove an incredible season, performing at a level far superior to anyone else. Watching the battle was amazing. They were on the limits. Every race was as if it was their last race, all or nothing, life or death, pushing beyond the limit. As a driver, watching that is almost motivating. So I guess you could call it a PR answer, but I actually thought that was quite interesting to hear Antonelli's perspective on that. He does, however, talk a lot about Monza 2024. Of course, not a Grand Prix he raced in, but he did do about three laps of Monza before crashing his Mercedes into the wall. He was purple sector one, purple sector two, and then lost it at the Parabolica. And Kimi says that that moment, because we talked about it, right, Mercedes didn't have to do that. I think it showed, and we talked about this at the time, how confident Mercedes were in Antonelli that they were just going to throw him into, I think it was Russell's, wasn't it, his Mercedes, just send him out there and give him the freedom to push. They wanted to make a statement, Mercedes, I think, by putting Antonelli out there, allowing him to push and just saying, look, this kid is serious, he's a future world champ. Of course, his future actually ended up in the wall, and it did affect Kimi a lot. Toto was heavily criticised for putting Kimi in for that session, or at least maybe they didn't expect Kimi to do what he did, but, like, they didn't really stop him. I feel like there was an intent, I think they even said this at the time, that there was an intention. They wanted Kimi to, like, drop the hammer and drop, like, a really impressive lap just to show, like, that they've kind of got the next generation ready to go, let's say. But Kimi crashed, of course, and he says, look, I had a lot of doubts about that. I'd done the tests, I had the car in hands, but that Monza accident marked me deeply. It was a moment I never managed to get past, even last year, when he actually came into the sport for real, having made that mistake. It stayed in my head, it slowed me down, it stopped me from expressing myself, I was driving really tense because I didn't want to crash, wasn't even enjoying it properly, I doubted myself a lot. And then he says, from the moment I won, right, so he won in China, once he won, then it took weight off his shoulders. He was like, OK, I actually can do this, and shortly after he was leading the championship, and then it's kind of, let's say, taken that monkey off his back, he feels a lot more freedom, he's not so worried about that Monza crash anymore, and now he's able just to drive in the way that he feels comfortable driving, and it's probably another reason, to be honest, why he's just accelerated over these last few months at the start of this season. I don't yet feel 100% free, though, he says. That's something that comes with time, so Antonelli's basically saying he's going to get even better in due course. But who's going to win the championship? Antonelli is obviously the favourite, could somebody else come back into the fight? Yes? This is how the start of the season looked. Russell was on pole by three tenths from Antonelli, Hadjar was eight tenths back, Max had crashed out in FP1, or in Qualifying 1, Leclerc, eight tenths back, Piastri-Norris, eight and a half, nine and a half tenths back, Hamilton, nine and a half tenths back, right? So, yeah, mega start to the season for Mercedes, where we are today is, of course, a very different story and even other teams are making good progress as well. Not to say that Audi are going to be challenging Mercedes anytime soon, but it's worth giving Audi some credit. They've had a very decent start to the season, given brand new power units and all the discussion around Sauber and, like, where Audi are trying to go, I do think their year has gone probably about as well as they could have expected and potentially more to come. They've scored points in the last three rounds consecutively, in Silverstone, in Spa and in Budapest as well. They're doing the job and they've got more to come. So, according to rumours, according to AMUS, of course, German publication, you'd expect, I mean, they're reliable enough anyway, but you'd expect them to be quite reliable when it comes to a German team. The Audi team plans four rounds of upgrades in the second half of the season. Apparently, three of them have significant improvements on the way. So, look, many teams have brought upgrades, but some teams have front-loaded their upgrades, trying to score more points as early as possible. Other teams have said, OK, we're not necessarily in the championship fight, so let's delay our upgrades, make sure they work, make sure we have enough data to justify that, and then bring major packages in the second half of the season, because if you're, like, a midfield team, this actually makes more sense, because if you can sneak a P5-P6, that can, like, you'd rather be P5-P6 on one weekend at the end of the season than be P11-P10 for the whole season, right? So you're better off, given the amount of points that are on the line for that, right? So it makes more sense, especially for the midfield teams, to be a bit more patient, and then, like, to try to bring upgrades which could really give them, like, a big result at the end of the year, and that would make them a lot more money. So that looks like what Audi are doing. Of course, there's also the logic of, how much do you think about next year? How much do you delay upgrades or cancel them entirely so we can save money for 2027? That's a question that some teams have different answers to. But Audi say, development is not expected to wrap up until Vegas, which is basically the end of the season. So they've got a lot of changes, and they, you know, they want to learn, right? So their opinion is, let's learn as much now and reuse this year's monocoque for next year so they can save money in that sense and save development time, and then as much as they can aerodynamically, they can learn and take into next year. So I think it looks like a sensible approach, and it could make Audi pretty competitive, right? It looks like they're already reasonably competitive, and according to this, they probably have the most upgrades to come of anyone, apart from probably Aston Martin, who have engine update, aero update, weight reduction, more aero updates, and probably more to come as well. So, yeah, Aston Martin, of course, have a lot on the way, but they're starting from a base that is far further down. Williams, just to quickly comment on them, because they have a big upgrade in Baku, as we understand, but they've already downplayed it and said, yeah, it's not going to be as game-changing as Aston Martin's was in Budapest. Val says, we are not at championship level, and, you know, we could have told you that. That's been my commentary for three years, and it's my commentary today. Our role is to make sure we fix it. We've got to move forward. I'm confident, as we did last year, that you are going to see a step forward. So, you know, let's see it, right? Let's see it. I think, I wouldn't say Val is living on borrowed time, but, because I do think he's in a tricky position, right? Like, you look at that situation, the Doralton capital ownership and the investment, it's still not the same as the other top entities. I think that he did a good job convincing Carlos Sainz that they could still get to that level with the structure at Williams. It's unlikely to, any time soon, I think, deliver any spectacular results, but, and because of that, I don't feel like Val has massively underperformed. It's just he's massively under-delivered on the expectations that he hyped up. So, who's going to catch Mercedes? Is it going to be Ferrari? Is it going to be McLaren? Is it going to be Red Bull Racing? Now, I don't think it's going to be Red Bull, first of all. I've discussed in recent days how, I don't know, I don't think they're the same team they used to be. I mean, they literally are not, because lots of things have changed, lots of their staff have changed as well. Newey is long gone as well. Is Max confident that Red Bull is the place to be? I'm also not so convinced. Ferrari have made major progress since the start of the season, and they've got engine upgrades on the way. I mean, this says development, full stop, so I guess we're talking engine as well. If you want to talk aerodynamic, Ferrari are probably already ahead and have been for some time. The real wild card on this list, of course, are the reigning Constructors' Champions in McLaren, because they haven't been doing much in the first part of the season. They turn up in Budapest with a big upgrade, it delivers big results, but is that just a one-weekend, you know, one-off, or are they going to be a serious contender? It's actually a very important question, not just for the rest of this championship, but also for the coming seasons. Red Bull have said, we're not going to do much more development, the car is the car, pretty much, and we're going to save a lot for next year. Max may or may not be happy about that. He may think, OK, good, next year's car's going to be better, I'll stay. He may think, well, this team's lost its way, McLaren are starting to find their footing, I might want to go over there, because Giampiero Lambiasi is set to join McLaren as soon as next year, we think. The rumour is, in fact, Red Bull's team principal Laura Marquise has said this, he's going to become their team principal at some point. Now, GP, if Max joins, maybe he wants to stay as the race engineer for a little bit longer. But McLaren can make quite a compelling case to Max, and to even others if necessary, that they are the place to be. Because their technical director, Neil Hoadley, says an awful lot of interesting things in this article. I'll leave the entire thing linked down below if you guys want to read it all. But a couple of excerpts that I thought were relevant. So, yeah, he's the technical director, they have a few technical directors, but he is of course well-positioned, and says, look, the launch car was pretty good, we made most of the right decisions, the layouts, the concepts were fine, but we weren't as quick as we wanted to be because we had to make sacrifices last year. They brought a lot of changes last year to chase the championship, which they eventually did get over the line and win with Lado Norris, but they needed to make upgrades, they needed to keep working to make that possible. So, they were inevitably going to be on the back foot starting this season, given that of course Mercedes had done exactly the opposite, they were over the weight limit, they had to dedicate time and resources to get back to that, and of course it cost them a little bit. But he also mentions how as the season has gone on, their understanding has increased dramatically, and if there's any team out there that has proven over the last couple of years that they can turn an increase in understanding into increased performance, it is McLaren, right? Since they brought that first upgrade, what was it, Austria 2023, when they brought that big upgrade, and immediately they were much more competitive, and it was like, wow, where's this McLaren come from? Since then, they have been the class of the field when it comes to aerodynamic development, not even just aero, in terms of brake ducts and all these clever things that they've been cooking up. So, it wasn't a huge surprise that they started this year behind, because they had to work so hard last year, and they were always going to have some sort of engine deficit in understanding to Mercedes, which they have been able to close the gap on that one, though, to a certain extent. They then say we've learned a lot about the tyres, so that's helped us as well, and actually that's influenced the updates that they have introduced. He does say the car still isn't that easy to drive, which they would like to change, but he does say more upgrades to come. We have small updates planned for the next few races, and then potentially a more significant package in Baku. So, that's the rumour, that Baku, big upgrade on the way, Zandvoort maybe not so much, but by the time they get to Baku, another big one will arrive. It will depend after that on how much performance we find, and whether we feel it's more advantageous to prepare a further package for the end of the season, or focus all of it on next year, because I think this might be the decisive factor. Yes, they have a big upgrade to come, and they have even more smaller upgrades to come, but they will decide whether they bring a big one for Austin or something like that, depending on whether they could be in a position to climb the championship. If they think they could maybe overtake somebody in the championship, then they might think about going for it, otherwise they might just develop for next year instead. But he says there's a good chance we can continue introducing updates beyond Baku without compromising next year, mostly just additional components rather than major bodywork changes. We also know that McLaren, their general strategy the last couple of years with their development has been bring major packages rather than very small tweaks, or save the tweaks until you can introduce them with a major package. So we've finally seen a major package of theirs, really, in Budapest, and apparently we have another one on the way in Baku, and potentially one more to come after that, which is of course Ferrari have upgrades as well, Mercedes have upgrades as well, but I think McLaren are to be feared to a certain extent. We're not really sure with only one race with this package where they're going to be, right? Was Budapest just a really good one for their car? And their new upgrade, was that just the perfect track for them? Are they going to be a high-downforce merchant's machine? Maybe. But what about Monza? Who knows, right? The car's still probably a bit too draggy, which is one thing, so I don't expect them to be dominant at the circuits where straight lines are more important. The engine, they also say, there's still some performance to find. They've done a lot of good work in terms of understanding how Mercedes are finding advantage, how to exploit all of it, but he says there's more to come. We're trying to increase downforce without creating additional drag. We know that there's more to come from our understanding from the engine, and there's a new engine upgrade on the way that we think Mercedes might bring in due course as well. So this is interesting for the championship. If McLaren are more consistently in the mix, and according to this discussion about the upgrades they have to come, and a lot of optimism there from Neil Hoadley, they will be relevant. They will be on mobile podiums. They will be winning more races, quite possibly. And well, this could be good or bad for Ferrari or for Mercedes. If you're Hamilton, you would really love to win a race and Antonelli to be pushed down into like fourth by the two McLarens. That's a much bigger point swing than if whenever you win, Antonelli's always second, right? Because if Antonelli can just stay on the podium every weekend, then he is going to win the championship almost certainly. But if McLaren can regularly knock him off the podium, then that's also very important. Of course, it could also work the other way around. Now we have another theoretical contender. If Hamilton is pushed down into third or fourth or whatever, even if Antonelli doesn't do that well, he would still maintain a nice, healthy point advantage because Hamilton, if he wants to win this title or Russell for the same matter, he's going to have to win races, you know, because the twenty five points are really important. If McLaren start to win a load of races, then even if Hamilton's second, but Antonelli's fourth or something, that's only a six point swing, which is not as big as first to second, which is a seven point swing. So worth keeping all that in mind. Again, Micka Hakkinen, who was the one that first told us in twenty twenty three that McLaren were going to be a serious threat to stay tuned, I kind of laughed at him at the time. He was right. And he's continued to be right. He also says with Lando and Oscar, good drivers, OK, maybe a bit of drama going on there. I don't know. Budapest was kind of spicy and there've been some rumors about Mark Webber and all of that. But Hakkinen says, look, why would you bring in Max? Why rock the boat? You've got a good setup, which I understand. But also, if Max wants to join, you know, it might be difficult to say no. And on the evidence of the last weekends where Verstappen was not very happy with his Red Bull and McLaren won the Grand Prix in the end, kind of at a canter, that may have an impact on Max's decision making. But it is going to be relevant for the rest of the championship. I think we're going to have to see Zandvoort and probably Mondra as well to really see, OK, where is this McLaren on more circuits? But once they bring an upgrade to Baku, who knows? They could be all over it. And Landau, I think he said this himself, but I certainly think that he's been driving better this year, at least so far, than he did last year when he won the championship. So, you know, not a driver to count out. But very much enjoyed your thoughts in the comments. Hit the like button if you enjoyed. Subscribe if you're new. Take care and I'll see you next time.