McLaren issues warning as ‘extremely capable’ Red Bull resolves weakness

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella believes Red Bull and Max Verstappen are firmly “in the game” for the Drivers’ Championship, having improved the competitiveness of the RB21.

Verstappen has closed his championship deficit to leader Oscar Piastri from almost 100 points down to 63 points after four strong race results in a row, including beating both McLarens in Singapore, a traditionally difficult venue for Red Bull in recent years.

Andrea Stella points to Red Bull ‘evidence’

Verstappen went into the F1 summer break after Hungary 97 points behind Piastri, but has closed that down to 63 points by way of four consecutive podium finishes; two second-places at Zandvoort and Singapore, and two wins at Monza and Baku.

Red Bull has introduced a steady trickle of updates to the RB21 over those same races, an evolution of the car that has coincided with McLaren’s MCL39 remaining largely static as the Woking-based squad has turned its attention to 2026.

These updates appear to have largely addressed the balance issues that plagued Verstappen’s efforts earlier in the season, with sporadic flashes of performance, such as at Suzuka and Imola, netting him his early wins. While low-downforce performance was expected to see Red Bull do better, medium to high-downforce requirements have seen less competitive showings, meaning Singapore marked a good litmus test for the car’s updates.

Verstappen’s slow reeling in of the two McLaren drivers ahead of him may be coming too late for a genuine championship challenge with only six race weekends remaining, but team boss Andrea Stella says he believes Red Bull has cured many of the issues that meant Verstappen only scored five podiums (including two wins) across the first 14 races of the championship.

“They were competitive in Monza, very competitive. And then they were competitive in Baku,” he said during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, a circuit with vastly different downforce requirements to the high-speed Monza and Baku.

“We thought, ‘Let’s see whether this [competitiveness] depends on using a low level of drag, small rear wings, and [if] it can be repeated at high level drag and big rear wings’.

“Here in Singapore, they might have struggled a bit in the past, and the evidence is that they might have resolved both of these high-drag and Singapore factors.

“But this is not a surprise. It’s Red Bull. They are extremely capable.

“Max is a driver who is just Max Verstappen. I don’t think we need to make any further comments, so it’s no surprise that they are in the game.

“It’s tight, and it’s interesting; obviously, we would like to make Formula 1 boring. We have done it sometimes, at some of the events, but normally, Formula 1 is competitive and tight.

“You have to accept the fight, and that’s what we are doing.”

In order to aid its competitiveness at Marina Bay, a circuit at which Red Bull has struggled in recent years, the Milton Keynes-based squad brought along two small revisions to the RB21 in Singapore, minor updates that nonetheless appeared to play a part in the team’s improved competitiveness at its bogey circuit.

Team boss Laurent Mekies said after Verstappen’s competitive second-place finish that it appears the steps forward made with the car in recent races appears genuine, and that Singapore had apparently confirmed the team has unlocked performance across the downforce spectrum.

“For us, being able to fight for the win means a lot after Monza and Baku, which are very different. You never know until you come to a high-downforce track,” he told the media in Singapore.

“We’ve been able to be in the right rhythm from Friday; we were in the right rhythm in qualifying, and we were very, very close to pole.

“And we were in the right rhythm in the race. We finished only a few seconds away from George. So this is good news.

“It means that what we have unlocked is not only low downforce-specific. We will not change our approach. We’ll continue to take it race by race.

“We’ll continue to take the learnings. There are probably quite a few learnings we can make from this race on some small pockets of performance that we may be able to unlock for the future.

“Austin will be a very different equation. Again, it’s back to the famous mid-speed corners, where McLaren has been very strong.

“Here [in Singapore], Turn 5, Turn 9, they have been very, very strong all weekend against us, and you have a lot of them in Austin and in Mexico. So we take it race by race, and then we’ll see.”

More on Max Verstappen’s 2025 title chances:

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👉 Max Verstappen delivers Singapore Grand Prix prediction in pursuit of title

Red Bull’s step forward in performance has come in the wake of the parent company opting for a change in leadership, as former team principal and CEO Christian Horner was removed after Silverstone, replaced by Mekies in both roles.

The upgrades introduced to the car since are a hangover from Horner’s time in charge, due to lead time in development and production, but Mekies has been singled out for praise by Red Bull’s Helmut Marko, who says that the French engineer’s engineering nous has contributed to a change in approach and the resulting step forward in performance.

Long-time Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan weighed in on how he feels processes have evolved since the change in team boss, saying that, in his eyes, not much in terms of engineering has changed.

“In terms of the actual sort of engineering process around the car, no, not really,” he said.

“Laurent is pretty open. You can talk to him, and we surely do.

“He’s open to ideas. He will let us do what we think is right, so, in that respect, not really.

“For me, not much has changed in that.”

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