George Russell claims McLaren advantage in 2025 “bigger than Red Bull has ever had”

George Russell believes McLaren should win every race during the 2025 F1 season and has claimed their advantage is greater than what Red Bull enjoyed during Max Verstappen’s near-perfect 2023 season.

Norris won the season-opener at Albert Park ahead of Verstappen.

While less than one second separated the pair at the end of the race, McLaren’s performance advantage was significant.

By Lap 34, Verstappen was running over 15 seconds behind Oscar Piastri, highlighting McLaren’s dominance at this early stage of the season.

Russell thinks McLaren are now in prime position to win every race, claiming they’ve been more dominant than Red Bull in recent years.

“Their car should win every race but I don’t think they will win every race this year. Let’s see,” Russell said as quoted by The Race.

“The gap they have this year on everybody is bigger than Red Bull has ever had. But when Max was in that car he was pretty reliable every single lap he did every single run in Q3, throughout qualifying, never really a question.

“Hopefully we can be there to capitalise like we were at the weekend, as that should have been a one-two for those guys.”

He added: “Three or four tenths [was Verstappen’s advantage in 2023], the advantage we’re seeing from McLaren right now is definitely bigger than that”.

Is the key to McLaren’s success tyres?

Many of McLaren’s rivals suspect their current pace advantage is down to how their car works the tyres.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner noticed how McLaren could get their tyres up to temperature - but still have good degradation levels.

Russell also feels their strong form is down to the tyres rather than pure downforce.

“If you’re talking about trying to find that amount of lap time in downforce that isn’t going to happen in a season and it’s never happened in a season,” Russell explained.

“They’re clearly doing something better than the rest, clearly substantially quicker than everybody when the tyres are getting hot.

“We saw that in the Bahrain test. We saw it in sector three in qualifying, they were four tenths faster than everyone else in sector three. Same car they had in sector one and two, only difference is tyre overheating.

“There’s room for us to improve, and we know we have room to improve but we don’t feel like there are masses of opportunities to improve in that region, it’s quite tightly controlled.

“So they’re clearly doing something pretty trick and that gap is huge.”