How Soon Can McLaren Lock Up The F1 Title? Let’s Do The Math

It is the query nobody thought they’d be asking back in March, yet here we’re — smack in the midst of the 2025 F1 summer break. The papaya rockets from Woking are threatening to run away with the entire 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 seventh. 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 isn’t settling for “excellent.” This team is scorching hot porridge — but what could occur if their porridge is cooled by an F1 mechanic with a dry ice blower? Because it stands, McLaren is sitting pretty with a commanding 559 points within the Constructors’ Championship, while their nearest competitor, and we use that term loosely, Ferrari trails with 260. That is a 299-point gap. With a “best case scenario” of 475 points left on the table for anybody team to secure with the remaining races and sprints, the mathematics is beginning to look pretty grim for the Tifosi. In an ideal, almost comical, best-case scenario for McLaren — where they proceed to bang out 1-2 finishes and sweep all of the sprint races — they might mathematically clinch the title on the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. For those flipping back through your calendars, that is race 17 of 24. They might be popping champagne corks while the remaining of the grid remains to be determining their mid-season upgrades.

Alright, superb. 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 incorrect. It just doesn’t occur. Cars break, drivers make mistakes — ever hear of weather? So what’s a more realistic, but still optimistic, scenario? Even when McLaren’s performance cools off to simply their season-average low end, the party remains to be on for an early celebration. Let’s call this the “barely less inevitable but in some way more inevitable” timeline. It is a working title, but bear with me here.

On this version, McLaren is not scoring an ideal set every race, but they’re still consistently out-scoring Ferrari by a healthy margin. In the event that they maintain a powerful, but not flawless, points advantage, the numbers point towards a championship coronation on the Singapore Grand Prix. Locking up the title under the lights, and warmth, of the Marina Bay Circuit still gives them a whopping six races to spare. To place that in perspective, that is a level of dominance that makes a few of Red Bull’s recent seasons appear to be a decent battle. Perhaps that second seat is very important in any case, huh?

Now for the fun part. What wouldn’t it take for McLaren to not win? We’re talking a few collapse of epic proportions. Replacing their power units with old Rover diesels slow. A bottling so bad, it’d make WeWork’s collapse appear to be a savvy business move. For Ferrari, or anyone else, to beat such a deficit, they would want McLaren to suddenly remember what it was prefer to be, well, the McLaren of a couple of years ago. It might require a level of self-sabotage not seen since Ferrari’s last strategy meeting.

We could say a world where each 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 cannot have the Drivers’ title, then dammit, neither can the opposite. Meanwhile, Ferrari would should execute a flawless string of top finishes, a feat they’ve found increasingly difficult to attain. Ferrari would want to average roughly 30 points per race weekend while McLaren scores a consistent zero. Obviously third place Mercedes can still be in the combo on this bizarro universe we crafted, but for brevity’s sake we are going to just mention Ferrari.

This is not only unlikely; it borders on the realm of science fiction. It might require horrible luck for one team and a miraculous, almost divine intervention for the opposite. So while it’s possible for McLaren to lose, it’s about as probable as finding an affordable boat that does not need any work. The remainder of the grid is not racing McLaren anymore — they’re racing math. And math all the time wins.