Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Guenther Steiner is that rare thing in modern motor sport: a genuine character; a straight-talking, old-school racer in an era of corporate jargon and marketing polish. Not despite that, but rather because of it, he has become a cult hero to millions thanks to his gloriously unfiltered appearances on Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive, cussing his way into the hearts of fans across the globe. But, while the world may have discovered him quite recently as the irascible boss of the Haas Formula 1 team, swearing at broken front wings, poor strategy calls, and of course his wincing drivers, his story is far longer, far more varied, and far more interesting than that.

Didier Auriol 1991 RAC Rally, Jolly Club’s Delta Integrale — Didier Auriol lights up the 1991 RAC Rally in Jolly Club’s Delta Integrale

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Now 60, Steiner has spent four decades in the racing world, from the rough-and-tumble stages of rallying to the glossy boardrooms of F1 factories, without ever applying for any of the jobs that propelled him forwards. The only position for which he has ever formally applied was his very first: as a Mazda rally mechanic in Belgium. That was in 1986. He has never sent a CV since.

And, now, with his F1 chapter closed – for the moment, anyway – he is about to reinvent himself yet again, this time as a MotoGP team owner. Yes, really: the man who once ran Jaguar’s F1 set-up for Niki Lauda, and built Haas F1 from nothing, is now going two-wheeled. As Steiner puts it, “It’s cool as shit.”

But to understand how a butcher’s son from the mountains of South Tyrol got to where he now is, you have to go back – way back. “I was born in Merano, in South Tyrol, in the north of Italy, very close to the Austrian border,” Steiner begins. “My parents weren’t rich. They came from nothing actually. They had to make their own success. So they opened a butcher’s shop – to give my sister and me the best they could – and they always worked very hard, both of them. I helped my dad in the shop.” There is a calm pride in his voice: not nostalgia, not sentimentality, just a rock-solid memory of a work ethic instilled young, the kind that does not merely shape a career, but also shapes a life.

M-Sport’s chief engineer with Ford’s new Focus, Paris Motor Show, 1998.

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“Motor sport was very small where I was brought up,” he continues. “It was all about skiing, and ice hockey too, but mainly skiing. I’m not a good skier because I preferred ice hockey. On Sundays, instead of going skiing, I always played ice hockey.” It is safe to say that Steiner’s childhood did not hint at future F1 greatness. Indeed, his parents were not remotely interested in racing. The mountain air was not full of the scent of Castrol R. But then a famously toothy Austrian came along.

“Niki Lauda was very prominent in Austria and our part of northern Italy when I was a kid,” Steiner recalls, “because he was F1 world champion for Ferrari in the 1970s [in 1975 and 1977, when young Guenther was 10 and 12 respectively]. So that triggered my interest. I watched every grand prix on TV. There was only one local motor sport event – the Bolzano-Mendola hillclimb – about 40km from our home. I used to beg my dad to take me to it every year. I must have been about seven when that started.”

Still, the idea of working in motor sport never occurred to him. “To be honest, I didn’t even understand that you could make a living out of motor sport,” he says, chuckling. “It was too far distant for me. I liked to watch it, but I never thought about working in it. It wasn’t even my dream. I never wanted to be a racing driver. Racing was something I watched, and I enjoyed, but I wasn’t trying to find a way into it.”

Guenther Steiner Ford, Colin McRae and Nicky Grist 1999 Monte Carlo Rally — Guenther Steiner was at Ford when Colin McRae and Nicky Grist were finding their feet with the new Focus – here at the 1999 Monte Carlo Rally

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So Steiner did an apprenticeship as a regular mechanic, then he did his national service. He was now 20, and his father had died, so, casting around for something to bend his mind to, “I said to myself, ‘Maybe I want to experience something different, something new.’ I saw an ad in [the German motoring and motor sport magazine] Auto Motor und Sport – ‘Mechanics wanted for Mazda in Belgium’ – so I applied.

“I drove to Belgium for the interview,” he remembers, warming to his story. “The chief engineer was German, so we did the interview in German – thank God – because I didn’t speak English at all back then. I spoke only German and Italian. Anyway, they offered me a job.”

“I couldn’t believe Niki knew who I was. He was a superstar and a legend. He was a hero of mine”

And, with that, young Guenther packed up and moved. “It was a simpler time in motor sport back then,” he recalls. “It was more like being in a travelling circus than working at a regular job. I took my first ever flight in 1986, to Finland, when I was 21, to work at the 1000 Lakes Rally.” After a few years with Mazda, he returned to Italy. He freelanced in a number of rallying roles, then he began to climb through the rallying ranks. “I worked for Top Run in 1989 and 1990, then I joined Jolly Club in 1991, running the wonderful Lancia Integrale in the World Rally Championship. Those were Lancia’s glory years.”

In 1997 came a call from David Richards. “He asked me to manage Prodrive’s European Rally Championship team,” Steiner remembers. “I could speak English OK by then. I asked my wife if she fancied moving to England. She said, ‘Yeah, why not?’” It was in Banbury that the one-time itinerant rally mechanic, now in his thirties, began to transition into senior management – and, crucially, into a leader. From Prodrive he moved to Malcolm Wilson’s M-Sport, where he led the development programme that made the Ford Focus a World Rally Championship winner, then came the phone call that changed his life, and still seems almost unbelievable today.

Gunter Steiner and Niki Lauda 2001 Jaguar — Steiner moved to F1 for the 2001 season when Jaguar chief Niki Lauda recruited him. Results were poor; Lauda departed before the end of 2002

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“One day in 2000 my phone rang. A woman said, ‘Mr Lauda would like to speak with you. Can he call you?’” Let’s pause here. Just imagine it. Niki Lauda – a three-time F1 world champion, a global icon, an airline tycoon – cold-calling a rally man working in Cumbria whom he had never met.

“I’d never spoken to Niki before,” Steiner says. “I’d never even been in the same room as him. I couldn’t believe he even knew who I was. I mean: Niki was Niki, a superstar and a legend. He was a hero of mine, an absolute hero. Anyway, he called me and he said he was running Jaguar Racing, the F1 team, which was owned by Ford. He’d been looking for someone to help him run it, and I’d been recommended to him by Tyrone Johnson, who’d been at Ford for ever – he joined Ford straight out of university in fact. Anyway, as I say, Ford owned Jaguar at that time, and I was working for M-Sport doing work for Ford, and I knew Tyrone, and Tyrone knew Niki. So that was the link. Anyway, Niki asked me to meet him for dinner in Vienna.”

They sat down together at a table in a fine-dining Viennese restaurant. Everyone had warned Guenther that the meal would be a 20-minute test of nerves, after which Lauda would make his excuses and bolt for the door. “Niki was famously impatient,” Steiner explains, “but we spoke for two hours. Amazingly, he never mentioned a job even once. The next morning, he called me and said, ‘Thank you for your time. You’re going to be working for me.’

“I thought, ‘What the f***?’ But obviously I didn’t phrase my reaction that way. I said, ‘Mr Lauda, what work am I going to do for you?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. I’ll tell you later.’”

Red Bull, 2005, Christian Horner and Gunter Steiner — Birth of Red Bull, 2005, with Christian Horner and Steiner leading the team in its early days

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Thus began Steiner’s F1 career. He joined Jaguar Racing in 2001, as managing director, reporting directly to Lauda, and he entered a political maelstrom. “Jaguar were doing shit,” Steiner says with typically unvarnished candour, “but I got on well with [Jaguar Racing’s number one driver] Eddie Irvine. He was coming to the end of his F1 career, but he was honest and straight-talking. I learned a lot about F1 from him – and of course from Niki as well.”

“I was doing OK at Red Bull but I could see that it was getting congested at the senior levels”

If Lauda was all instinct, more knee-jerk than strategy, Ford’s senior execs were the opposite: suited and booted, buttoned-down, and PowerPoint-wielding. “They could hardly have been more different from a cultural point of view,” Steiner says. “Actually, there were not only two cultures, but three or four. There was Niki, there were the German career executives like Dr [Wolfgang] Reitzle, and there were the dyed-in-the-wool American car guys. Then there was me, trying to pick up the pieces.”

Despite the chaos, Steiner thrived – until, that is, Ford changed the guard. “When they brought in Tony Purnell and David Pitchforth, and they got rid of Niki, they offered me the team principal job, but reporting to Tony and Dave. Well, my allegiance was to Niki. I didn’t see myself doing what needed to be done under Tony’s and David’s leadership. So I left.”

Jaguar’s Eddie Irvine at the 2002 Japanese GP – the Ulster driver was an F1 tutor and friend for Steiner at this time

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It turned out to be a wise move. Purnell and Pitchforth were and are both clever chaps, but within a year the Jaguar F1 team had been sold to Red Bull. Christian Horner duly came in. “Christian started in December 2004,” Steiner explains. “He and I knew each other already. He’d been trying to get himself into an F1 team for a while. He’d tried with Jordan and Arrows, and he finally made it stick with Jaguar when Red Bull bought the team. I started in January 2005. I was operations director, and I stayed about a year and a half. I was doing OK initially, but after a while I could see that it was getting a bit congested at the senior levels. I don’t really like that sort of thing, so I left.”

Did Horner already have the mien of a future F1 titan, I wonder? “Ah, it’s hard to say,” Guenther replies, scratching his chin. “He was in his early thirties back then, remember. I guess you could say he took the best part of 20 years to develop into what he eventually became. Back then he was just a former racing driver who’d run a Formula 3000 team. Oh and he hadn’t been a very good driver, actually, as Zak Brown always reminds him, because they raced each other a few times and Zak jokes that Christian was the only guy he could be sure of beating. But Dr [Dietrich] Mateschitz [the Red Bull co-founder, co-owner, and head honcho] believed in Christian.”

Gunter Steiner and Elton Sawyer during NASCAR testing Daytona 2008 — Steiner with Red Bull’s competition director Elton Sawyer during NASCAR testing at Daytona in 2008; the team was based in Mooresville

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By 2006, tiring as he puts it of the “senior congestion” within Red Bull’s F1 operation, Steiner began to allow his attention to drift elsewhere. “I’d always wanted to live in the States – and Dr Mateschitz offered me a role in NASCAR,” he says. “I didn’t know anything about NASCAR, but I asked my wife what she thought of the idea, and she replied, ‘Let’s try it.’” So they moved to Mooresville, North Carolina – NASCAR country – and so began yet another chapter in the multistoried life and works of Guenther Steiner, who was now in his early forties.

However, by 2009, his NASCAR adventure was already over. Not everything works out. Even so, Steiner stayed Stateside. “I found that I liked living there. Soon we had a daughter. We wanted to bring her up in America. So I co-founded a company, Fibreworks Composites, and we based it in Mooresville, and we built it up from five people to 300 people. We work in motor sport, of course, but also in custom design, engineering, transportation, aerospace, defence, even medical. It’s still based in Mooresville. We still live in Mooresville.”

“I suggested a US-based F1 team using some Ferrari tech, working carefully within regulations”

Also in Mooresville came a chance meeting with the F1 journalist, broadcaster and would-be team boss Peter Windsor. “I bumped into Peter in a coffee shop in Mooresville. I asked him what the hell he was doing there, because Mooresville is a NASCAR town, and Peter is an F1 guy, not a NASCAR guy. He wouldn’t tell me, but I later found out that he was trying to start USF1 [a stillborn US-based F1 team] with Chad Hurley, the YouTube guy [a co-founder and former CEO of YouTube in fact]. A little while later Chad contacted me, because he thought that my company, Fibreworks Composites, might be able to help USF1, but it didn’t work out. Still, it had planted a seed in my mind. I thought: maybe I can do something different. So I spoke to Mr [Giampaolo] Dallara [the founder of his eponymous racing car constructor], and Mr [Stefano] Domenicali [who was then the team principal of Ferrari], and I suggested a US-based F1 team using some Ferrari tech, working carefully within the F1 regulations.”

Steiner wrote a business plan. Ferrari agreed to it. Bernie Ecclestone didn’t say no – which, as Steiner puts it, “is as close to support as you get from Bernie”. By 2014 they had the necessary licence. By 2016 they were racing in F1.

Haas F1 2016 Australian Grand Prix Esteban Gutiérrez and Romain Grosjean — Haas made its F1 debut at the 2016 Australian Grand Prix with drivers Esteban Gutiérrez (No 21) and Romain Grosjean (No8)

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Guenther is clearly proud of Haas, although he is never boastful about it. “Most people in the other teams were reasonably encouraging,” he says. “They may not have liked the idea very much because it was new and different, but they respected it, and they realised it was legitimate and fair. Well, pretty much all of them. Well, to be precise, all of them except Ron Dennis [the McLaren chairman], who gave me shit in a team principals’ meeting. He said we were circumventing the regulations. I replied, ‘The regulations are available to everyone, so you can read them if you like. Oh and if you don’t have a copy, just go on the internet and you’ll find them.’ There was an atmosphere then, because people didn’t talk to Ron like that. But I wasn’t nasty – I just explained that I’d followed the regulations. Even so, by the time I’d finished saying what I had to say, Ron was on his feet and shouting at me. It was pretty good fun.

“In the beginning, when we set out, Ferrari asked us if we could run Esteban Gutiérrez in one of our cars, and for the other car we were initially talking to Nico Hülkenberg. And we nearly did a deal with him actually, but at the last minute he called me and said he’d decided to change his mind. So then I had to find a team-mate for Esteban, and quite quickly I did a deal with Romain Grosjean.

Haas Kevin Magnussen — With the departure of Russian driver Nikita Mazepin before the 2022 season, Haas turned to Kevin Magnussen, pictured

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“Romain’s highs are high and his lows are low. But on a good day he’s quick, very quick. In fact, on a good day you wouldn’t want anyone else. But on a bad day you’d definitely want someone else. Anyway, we went for Romain and Esteban, and we spoke to Kevin Magnussen also, and Kevin left a very good impression on me and Gene [Haas, the owner of his eponymous F1 team] because you could see how much he wanted the job. I mean, the guy just wanted to drive a race car, but we were a little bit scared of hiring him for 2016 because, although he’d raced well for McLaren in 2014, he hadn’t raced at all in 2015. He’d been McLaren’s reserve driver that year, and we wanted drivers with current up-to-date experience. But for our second year, 2017, when we were looking for a replacement for Esteban, and Kevin had current experience again because he’d been racing for Renault in 2016, we went for him.

“I always liked Kevin. I liked his spirit. You know: going racing, simple, no bullshit. When he’s in a good car, he’s the best. But when the car isn’t so good, maybe he sometimes gives up a bit too quickly, in my opinion, and I don’t know where that comes from. But Romain and Kevin were a great line-up for us for four seasons [2017-2020].

“When Covid came along, in 2020, we mothballed everything during that season, and we didn’t do any development at all, so I knew that our 2021 car was going to be very bad. I even told Romain and Kevin to look for other drives. Anyway, we got Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher for 2021. Nikita brought money with him, and Ferrari was supportive of Mick.

“What Nikita did with that girl was stupid and wrong [in late 2020 Mazepin was filmed inappropriately touching a woman in a car, which action he himself described as “a huge mistake”]. Nikita’s father was absolutely furious with him about it, because he’d given him this golden opportunity yet he went and did something so idiotic.

“By the time I’d finished saying what I had to say, Ron Dennis was on his feet and shouting at me”

“Anyway, then Putin invaded Ukraine [which meant that Mazepin, a Russian citizen, would no longer be permitted to race in F1], and I don’t remember who else was available at the time, but there was no one free who was great, and we had no time to find anyone anyway. Gene asked me, ‘Do you know what Kevin is doing?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I just ran into him a few weeks ago at Daytona, because he was racing a Cadillac in IMSA for Chip Ganassi.’ So I put the telephone down on Gene and I called Kevin straight away. That’s how he got back in. He was contracted to Peugeot’s WEC team for 2022, but he told me, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I think I can get out of that contract.’

“People said Kevin was lucky, because he only got his chance to get back into F1 because of Putin, but actually we were lucky, to be able to get such a good driver at such short notice, and a guy who already knew our team. Because Haas as a team is different, you know? And getting used to a new team is always difficult – just look at Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari this year. And when Kevin came back it felt like he’d been away for only a week or two, then he scored points in Bahrain straight away, in the first race of the season. It was great.”

Gunter Steiner CEO of Tech3 — Formula 1’s loss is MotoGP’s gain as Steiner, who recently turned 60, became CEO of Tech3

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Then came the chaos, the fun, the Netflix boom, and the Steiner memes. Suddenly, Guenther was famous. “I didn’t expect us to be featured in Drive to Survive very much,” he says, leaning back in his chair and laughing fit to bust, “so I just behaved like the cameras weren’t there. I forgot I was mic’d up. When the premiere came out, I didn’t go – but at the next team principals’ meeting everyone was talking about me. And I was like, ‘F***, did they really put all that swearing in?’”

Yes; yes, they did; and fans loved it.

But behind the scenes there were frictions: disagreements with Gene Haas about direction, strategy, spending, development and more. “In the end,” Steiner says, “I was fine with it. Gene can do what he wants, and I can do what I want. I’m 60. Financially secure. I can work if I want, but I don’t have to.”

Would he embark on yet another new project, or would he relax at home in Mooresville, while keeping a weather eye on Fibreworks Composites and enjoying family life? “Well, I went to a MotoGP race in Austin, in April 2024,” he says, smiling. “I only went there for fun, but I thought, ‘This is cool; maybe I could run a MotoGP team?’ So I started looking. I’ve got good investment contacts, so I spoke to a few people, and we got the money together to buy Tech3.”

Gunter Steiner in São Paulo, 2023 — One of the greatest characters in motor racing history – here at the Haas helm in São Paulo, 2023

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He will take over on January 1, 2026. He says that he will not go to every race, but that he will be deeply involved – just as he was deeply involved at Haas, at Jaguar, at M-Sport and at Prodrive.

And if F1 ever came calling again, what would his reaction be? “Never say never,” he says, frowning, “but it would have to be a project, not a job. I’m done with just doing a job.”

That seems like a good moment to finish. But I have one final question: what makes him happiest? “Ah, well, it makes me happiest when I’m doing something exciting and new,” he says. “Always I want to keep engaged. I don’t need to work to pay my bills. Besides, work isn’t all about money. I could have made more money in my life, but I like to experiment, to take risks, and to create, and I don’t take myself too seriously. If I fail, it’s alright.”

Born: 07/04/1965, Merano, Italy

1986 Moves to Belgium as a mechanic for Mazda’s WRC campaign.
1989 Returns to Italy with Top Run Motorsport as assistant team manager.
1991 Becomes head of reconnaissance and then technical manager at Jolly Club.
1997 A shift to the UK with Prodrive.
1998 Recruited by M-Sport as project manager, then director of engineering.
2001 Switches to F1’s Jaguar Racing.
2005 Joins Red Bull as technical operations director; helps establish a NASCAR team in the US.
2009 Starts Fibreworks Composites.
2014 Becomes team principal at Haas F1; in 2016 the team starts GP racing.
2019 Becomes the unlikely star of Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive.
2024 Departs Haas; UK live show tour.
2025 Announces MotoGP future.

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Soon we’ll know the outcome of what has turned out to be a fascinating three-way title fight. Someone has to win it. And by the final race the fascination will be in how we got there. The grands prix in Mexico and Brazil signalled that Lando Norris was far from the delicate flower many had written off against the tougher cookies Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri. These two races set a tone, especially as they illuminated moments of competitive distress for Norris’s two title rivals – as well as a sensational back-from-the-dead recovery by Verstappen in São Paulo. In particular these GPs beautifully encompassed the sheer volatility of a seasonal contest which had initially looked like a straightforward exclusively McLaren affair.

The front four cars of Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen went into Turn 1 of the Mexico City Grand Prix side-by-side

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“The altitude of Mexico City makes the surface of the Hermanos Rodriguez track unpredictable”

The high altitude of Mexico City makes the surface of the Hermanos Rodriguez track unpredictable in the extreme in this temperature-sensitive Pirelli era. Because the air contains fewer molecules, the slightest bit of sunshine heats the surface up super-fast (less blockage through the thin air) and a bit of cloud cover reduces it equally quickly (thinner air means less absorption of the heat).

All of which means that the sensitivity of these cars to getting the tyre temperatures balanced between the two axles is even more acute than normal. Any car which can do that relatively easily (the McLaren much more than the Red Bull) will be at a significant advantage here. So long as the driver can get the whole ball rolling in generating front temperatures in the tyre’s core. So Norris had a bigger advantage than normal over both Verstappen and his own team-mate Piastri. Why so?
In the case of the Red Bull, Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase gave a great summary of their challenge after the Friday practices in which Verstappen was super-quick over a qualifying simulation but slow over a long run as the surface of his rear tyres overheated. “The challenge we are working on at the moment is really trying to find that combination of tyre inner and surface temperature… Over one lap we were quick but it’s the high-fuel run pace we are really having to focus all of our attention on this evening. We feel we are not really in a happy place with our tyre deg and thermal control of the tyre.”

Norris’s win in the thin air of Mexico City pushed him a single point ahead of his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri – game on!

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The balance between the tyre’s core temperature and its surface is crucial in allowing it to work properly. The mechanical grip element of the tyre relies upon the structure to bend to oppose the loads being fed into it by the tread, a process known as hysteresis. To do that effectively the core needs to reach an optimum temperature. Too cold and it will remain inflexible and gripless. But if the track surface is as smooth as in Mexico, the tread doesn’t have much to bite into – and it can be that it provides insufficient load into the core to get it up to the required temperature. Without much supporting help from hysteresis, the tread will then tend to overheat. Especially when the downforce loads are 25% less than normal because of the thin air. The combination of hot tread and cold core is what Verstappen and Red Bull were suffering. To prevent the rears from wildly overheating over a race stint, it was necessary to engineer-in understeer, limiting the car’s potential in qualifying. Verstappen qualified fifth, 0.5sec slower than Norris’s pole.

Norris’s McLaren was working beautifully. Because this car inherently has great control of its rear tyre temperatures (with a trick brake duct design worth more than usual because of the thin air making cooling so much more difficult), McLaren was able to give Norris a great front end for qualifying in the confident knowledge that the increased moments and loads onto the rears would not overheat them in the race.

But you still need to be able to initiate the process, which on such a low-grip surface is not a given. It’s where Piastri was struggling. Norris will typically overlap his braking and cornering more than Piastri whose style is more binary. Where the grip is low, this really comes into its own and Norris was even overlapping braking with throttle early in the lap, feeding the loads into the front tyres progressively to give him the front tyre temperature which then allowed him to rotate the car early in the turn. Piastri could not take anything like as much speed into the early part of the first turn with his fronts not yet up to temperature – and this snowballed through the whole interlinked sequence of Turns 1, 2 and 3, losing him a quarter-second to his team-mate before the lap had barely begun. More steering lock required to get the turns meant more oversteer on the exit and by the end of the lap his rears were overheating, losing him another chunk through the traction sections there. It left him only eighth on the grid, 0.1sec slower than Verstappen.

Haas’s Oliver Bearman had his best result to date in Mexico.

So that was the backdrop to Norris disappearing off into the distance after calmly controlling the two Ferraris snapping at his heels into Turn 1. Hugging the inside, with Lewis Hamilton tucked right up behind him, Norris backed off early. Hamilton flicked left, expecting team-mate Charles Leclerc to make room for him, but he couldn’t – because Leclerc had Verstappen to his left. Four-abreast up to Turn 1, Verstappen was forced over the kerb and onto the grass on the corner’s outside, rejoining at Turn 3. Hamilton was ahead of Leclerc as they headed in to Turn 1 but Leclerc then opted to take the short cut across the run-off, emerging in the lead out of Turn 3. He backed off to allow Norris back into the lead while Verstappen allowed Hamilton to re-pass for third through Turns 4 and 5. Hamilton was expecting Leclerc to give him back second place, but Leclerc had other ideas and pressed on in forlorn chase of the dominant Norris.

Hamilton was repeatedly questioning the team about what it was going to do about the Leclerc situation when Max ambushed him from a long way back into Turn 1 on the sixth lap. They ran through there side-by-side, Verstappen slightly ahead but now on the outside for the interconnected Turn 2. There wasn’t room for both and Verstappen took to the run off and emerged ahead. Hamilton tried to retaliate into Turn 4 but locked up – and took the escape route. He chose not to give the place back, which earned him a 10sec penalty at his pitstop.

McLaren performance engineer Andrew Jarvis joined the Mexico podium

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All the various off-track excursions kept the stewards busy and many fans were enraged but none of it affected Norris. Piastri was running fifth when McLaren pitted him for a second time, trying to get him by the two Mercedes, triggering Merc into covering him off with Kimi Antonelli and George Russell. It got Piastri ahead of Antonelli, allowing the McLaren to chase down Russell who could find no way by Oliver Bearman.

Piastri put a big move on Russell into Turn 1 and set off after Bearman. But the flurry of second stops had vaulted the one-stopping Verstappen up to third – and with a big tyre offset advantage over Leclerc. Unlike the others, Verstappen had started on the mediums rather than the softs and so they were now inverted and Verstappen quickly closed the Ferrari down as Piastri did the same to Bearman. Both dices were discontinued by a late VSC for the broken-down Williams of Carlos Sainz. Leclerc thereby held onto second place – but half a minute behind Norris.

At Interlagos two weeks later Norris was not quite as dominant but still managed to take maximum points from the sprint weekend, winning both the 24-lapper on Saturday and the 71-lap main event. Both times Antonelli’s Mercedes followed him across the line.

It was a win for Norris in Mexico City – his first since the Hungarian GP in early August. Now the drivers’ championship was wide open

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Around this track the tyre demand was very different to that of Mexico, but still highly influential in the competitive order. The challenge here was pushing the tyres hard enough to get them up to temperature and keeping them there – and on a track where the downforce was compromised by the increased ride height needed to accommodate the bumps. The McLaren, as the most flexible performer, was untroubled by that demand and Norris was in confident form after his Mexican victory. Piastri was closer to the pace than he had been there but was still suffering a little more understeer on entry and, with more lock applied, more snaps on exit. After crashing out of the sprint race – ironically on water brought onto the track by Norris – he qualified fourth, 0.3sec adrift of his team-mate, with Antonelli and Leclerc between them.

“Max started from the pitlane as Norris took off in the lead from Antonelli, Leclerc and Piastri”

But that was way better than Verstappen who, for the first time in his Red Bull career, was unable to graduate from the Q1 part of qualifying on sheer pace. The Red Bull was nowhere and was taken out of parc fermé so as to change its set-up for a third time – and a new power unit was fitted. Verstappen started from the pitlane as Norris took off in the lead from Antonelli, Leclerc and Piastri.

Verstappen barely had the opportunity of judging if the latest set-up worked before there was a safety car (for local hero Gabriel Bortoleto who had also crashed his Sauber – very heavily – in the sprint race). Upon the resumption of racing from that, Norris sprinted away. Piastri got great momentum on Antonelli and made for his inside into the Senna Esses, with Leclerc to their outside.

Another pole for Norris in Brazil; he’s starting to look like an F1 world champion

Antonelli defended by taking up a tight line, knowing Piastri was there somewhere and assuming he’d be forced to tuck in behind before the apex. But Piastri was already too committed for that and as the Mercedes kept moving across, the McLaren locked up and slid into Antonelli when there was no further room. This slewed the Mercedes sideways but what would have been a spin was arrested by hard contact with Leclerc’s front left wheel. This righted Antonelli’s car and he continued (now behind Piastri) but it ripped away the tyre on the Ferrari, fatally damaging its suspension. Leclerc pulled off to the side and a Virtual Safety Car was deployed while marshals moved the car.

This was perfect for Verstappen – especially so since the team was seeing he had a slow puncture in his right-rear. So he was brought in and the set of hards on which he’d started were switched for mediums. He rejoined at the back but now on the best tyre around F1’s best circuit for overtaking. Now, he began to feel – finally – that the car was working. The set-up changes had worked and the new Honda power unit was singing. Another Verstappen Interlagos masterclass was about to unfold.

Norris also dominated the São Paulo sprint race, winning the 24-lapper from pole, closely followed by Mercedes’ 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli

LAT Images

In the 23 laps before his first pitstop in what was a two-stop race, Norris pulled out around 7sec over team-mate Piastri, by which time it had been confirmed that Piastri would serve a 10sec penalty at his pitstop for the Antonelli incident. Meantime, although Verstappen’s fourth place was flattered by cars taking their first stops (he was still 20sec adrift of Norris), he’d made great progress on his first set of medium tyres. He replaced them with another set, making his second stop just four laps after Norris made his first, at which the McLaren driver had been obliged to switch to softs.

Verstappen, by starting on his quickly discarded hards, had already met the requirement of using two compounds in the race – which was a huge advantage on this day when the medium tyre was so much better than either the (very quick-wearing) soft or the hard (way too slow). Verstappen took 9sec out of Norris in this stint – and Norris still had to stop again. He did so on the 50th lap and emerged 8sec behind Verstappen but on medium tyres fitted 16 laps later than Verstappen’s. Behind Norris ran the two Mercedes of Antonelli and Russell, both of which had been able to pass Piastri as he took his 10sec penalty.

Norris and Piastri led Verstappen at the start of round one in Australia back in March – a taste of what to expect for the rest of the year

DPPI

It was obvious that Norris would catch the race-leading Verstappen fast, but could Verstappen hang on to win? At the 0.5sec per lap Norris was gaining, he was set to be with the leader three laps from the end. But there were now two crucial tyre questions. Could Verstappen’s mediums actually do what would be a 37-lap stint? If they could, would Norris still have a grip advantage by the time he’d used up his tyres erasing that 8sec deficit?

“Norris was 10sec up the road and on the way to his seventh victory of the season”

Red Bull decided there was a better chance of making the new set of softs in Verstappen’s garage be fast for long enough to pit and catch Norris than there was of getting the mediums to last long enough to hold him off. There was surprise on the pitwalls of the other teams as Verstappen peeled in for a third stop. He rejoined behind Russell and quickly passed him but as he set off after Antonelli, the softs had already given their best. The gamble had failed and although he pressured the 19-year-old Merc driver hard over the last few laps, he didn’t have enough of an advantage to put a pass on him. It had been a sensational Verstappen performance regardless, but Norris was 10sec up the road and on the way to his seventh victory of the season, extending his lead in the championship by 24 points over Piastri. Now, Norris was looking like a champion in the making.

The season’s opening race in Melbourne was actually an uncannily accurate microcosm of the season to come: the McLarens way faster early on, with Verstappen coming back at them hard in the late stages, threatening to ambush victory from nowhere. Around Albert Park it was the rain and a safety car which gifted Verstappen that opportunity. In the dynamics of the season, it was a breakthrough late development on the Red Bull RB21 after McLaren had switched off any improvements to their car – to concentrate on ’26.

The MCL39 was so good, it had McLaren making arrangements for how to win it more than ensuring that they did. In terms of the constructors title that worked fine – as Red Bull was essentially a one-car team while McLaren had two heavy hitters in Piastri and Norris. In fact McLaren set a new record by sealing that title with six races still remaining. But in the drivers’ contest, while it was indulging itself in internal fairness policies which attempted to give absolute equality between Norris and Piastri, McLaren was blindsided by Verstappen’s late rampage.

“McLaren was beginning to creak as the Verstappen onslaught gained momentum”

There were occasions where that fairness gatekeeping explicitly compromised McLaren. In Singapore and Austin in particular, points and possible victories were lost to it. While at Monza, Piastri was requested to give a place back to Norris that had been gained through a problem at Norris’s pitstop. But there were other, less obvious, consequences. The backstory to the aftermath of Monza was Piastri, back at the factory, making his feelings very clear and not in a gentle way. At the next race – in Baku – Piastri for the first time lost his composure and could do no right, crashing out of both Q3 and the race. McLaren was beginning to creak as the Verstappen onslaught gained momentum.

Monza was the start of Verstappen’s unlikely title challenge; he’d win the next two of three races

So much for the competitive dynamics of the season which led to the outcome. But they were based upon technical hard points: why was the McLaren so good? And how do we explain the Red Bull’s variable form?

There’s a lot of legacy in the answers to those questions. The ground effect car of the 2022 regulations – in its final season in ’25 – is a tricky beast. Getting an aerodynamic balance that works through the full range of corner speeds places a false ceiling upon downforce creation. More than previous cars, they naturally want to understeer at low speeds and oversteer at high and the bigger a circuit’s corner speed spread, the more of a limitation that becomes. Whichever car can achieve that speed range balance at the highest downforce will have the advantage – one which is multiplied by the concomitant tyre behaviour. That’s because the balancing of tyre temperatures between front and rear axles gives a big race day advantage on a control tyre which in its conception degrades through a thermal mechanism – i.e. it loses performance through heat more than wear but is also reluctant to switch on if it doesn’t reach a certain temperature threshold.

This is all very relevant to the respective performance profiles of the McLaren and Red Bull. In the first couple of years of the regulation set, mastery of underbody design and suspension had given Red Bull a huge advantage over everyone, making its car relatively immune from the bouncing phenomenon which restricted how low the others could run and therefore the downforce their underfloors could generate.

Christian Horner departed Red Bull after the British GP

But as the others caught up with that, so it became about retaining that spread of corner speed balance as everyone increased their downforce, no longer limited by the bouncing. Partway through ’24 Red Bull’s attempts at increasing downforce to match McLaren took it down a dead end of ill balance. The latter part of last year and the conception of the 2025 RB21 was all about reversing out of that.

McLaren meanwhile had developed along a path which prioritised retaining an acceptable balance through slow and fast corners. That has been McLaren’s path since 2023. In surrendering the peak, they devised an underfloor which would keep the car in balance over a bigger speed range. It didn’t have the Red Bull’s grip at speed and it didn’t have the slow-corner agility of Ferrari. But it was a better compromise than either and that took them to the ’24 constructors’ title.
For the ’25 MCL39 McLaren developed that foundation aggressively, with a front suspension featuring an enhanced anti-dive angle, allowing the car to run lower. An underfloor with a more forwards centre of pressure got around one of the downsides of reducing the dive – i.e. front end load at low speeds. The layout of the front suspension arms and steering rack formed a cascade of aerodynamic surfaces which fed the tunnel inlets for the underfloor. Furthermore, there was real innovation in the cooling of the car and of its brakes. The McLaren needed far fewer external cooling vents than other cars in hot weather, giving an aerodynamic benefit. Innovative internal brake duct design helped generate the optimum tyre temperatures at the front (where the challenge is quickly transferring heat through the rims into the tyres) and rear (where the challenge is to direct the heat away). McLaren’s advantage in rear tyre cooling was big. How much performance this translated to depended upon the track and conditions but was sometimes the mechanism of superiority.

“The Red Bull was especially good if the fast corners were combined with a low wing demand”

In the respective technical evolutions of McLaren and Red Bull is much of the explanation of the season’s volatility. The McLaren was competitive pretty much everywhere, sometimes dominant, the Red Bull would be quick at fast-corner tracks. It was especially good if the fast corners were combined with a low wing demand, such as at Jeddah or Silverstone where the car was notably aero-efficient, retaining good downforce for low drag. And of course it was driven by Max Verstappen, a driver capable of amazing feats of virtuosity. But even he would not be able to override a car which was fundamentally slow – which the Red Bull was at circuits such as Bahrain, Monaco or Budapest where the limitation was rear tyre temperatures. It was a car with a much narrower set-up sweet spot than the McLaren – or even the Ferrari or Mercedes – needing more manipulation to find the optimum compromise in corner speeds and types. This could still bite even in the car’s much improved post-Zandvoort spec – as Verstappen’s São Paulo Q1 exit showed.

Piastri led by 34 points following his win at Zandvoort

DPPI

That update was all about a new front wing with a notably big plan area (introduced at Zandvoort) and a new floor (appearing at the following race, Monza) which in combination gave Verstappen a car with which he could have an aggressively grippy front at low speeds with less of an instability on corner entry in high speeds. This came just as the championship visited the low wing demands of Monza and Baku and Verstappen’s consecutive victories there reignited the embers of his title challenge. In applying that pressure to McLaren, the internal strains began to show there.

This period of a rejuvenated Red Bull coincided with the departure of Christian Horner and replacement by Laurent Mekies. The reality was more technical and to do with physical updates in the pipeline well before Horner was ditched two days after the British Grand Prix. That said, Mekies did take the ball and run with it impressively well.

At Zandvoort the McLaren was in its element – Piastri had taken his seventh victory of 2025 and Norris had retired from second with an oil leak. At that point Norris had won five times, Verstappen twice and Piastri led the championship by 34 points. But it preceded a barren period for him, one where first Verstappen, then Norris came into the ascendant and Piastri’s difficulty was aggravated by the way McLaren’s attempted fairness policy hurt him.

But it was race control rather than the team which took away what was shaping up into a Silverstone victory by imposing a 10sec penalty. The way he’d bunched the pack by heavy braking upon the second safety car restart was judged to have been erratic – even though he’d done the same on the first restart. The only difference the second time was that Verstappen was caught unawares as he was looking at his dash and had to briefly overtake to avoid a collision. That and Monza were psychological blows as he fought for a world championship in just his third season of F1. Another arguably misguided penalty for his collision with Kimi Antonelli in Brazil didn’t help, but he was already on the competitive backfoot by then as Norris hit his stride.

Norris had not liked the way the car’s suspension gave him less steering feel and several times early season he overcommitted on corner entry, resulting either in lost lap time or occasionally – such as in Jeddah – a big crash in qualifying. Piastri’s more straightforward driving style wasn’t so compromised by this. McLaren created a new front suspension, introduced in Montreal, to enhance the steering feel which Norris used for the rest of the season. That played its part, as did Norris’s pushing of his engineering team after Singapore in getting him as well tuned into this car as he had been of last year’s. But it took much of the season to get there.

Italian Grand Prix winner Verstappen – with the McLaren duo now in his sights

Neither Mercedes nor Ferrari really figured in the title hunt, though occasional race winner George Russell maximised a Merc which had a tendency to run its tyres too hot. Russell’s consistent pace provided something of an eye-opening revelation to his rookie team-mate Kimi Antonelli who nonetheless was making progress – including pole for the Miami sprint – until the team introduced a new rear suspension which lost him all feeling in the car and led to a mid-season slump. Once this had been ditched he began to recover to the extent that by Brazil he was able to be the quicker Mercedes driver.

“Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton was disqualified from the results in China for excessive plank wear”

The Ferrari just could not usually run at the ride heights around which its aerodynamics had been configured, the first sign of this coming when Lewis Hamilton was disqualified from the results in China for excessive plank wear. This was a day after he’d won the sprint. But it was a barren first season at Ferrari for Hamilton. Aside from the car’s shortcomings, he struggled to adapt his style to the heavy emphasis on engine braking the Ferrari used for corner entry rotation. This was a trait with which the incumbent Charles Leclerc was brilliantly adept at exploiting and he often put the car in places it had no right to be, not least pole in Budapest. Both drivers would typically be instructed to lift and coast a few laps into the race so as to limit plank wear. It was a disappointing season and predictably there were soon calls for change and criticism of the drivers from the corporate side. Couldn’t be Ferrari’s fault, after all.

There was a small performance gap between the top four teams and an incredibly close midfield, one which was dominated in the points table by Williams, with its strong Alex Albon/Carlos Sainz line-up. The irony was not lost on Sainz that he took a podium in his Williams (in Baku) before Hamilton could do so in the Ferrari he’d vacated for him. Red Bull’s junior team Racing Bulls delivered a driveable car in which Isack Hadjar starred. He took his first podium in Zandvoort.

It was a tough first year for Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari… but then there’s always next season with its new regs

The Newey effect wasn’t apparent as Aston struggled with an aerodynamically inefficient car while he concentrated on ’26. But on high downforce tracks it was often quite respectable. Fernando Alonso, 45, dominated Lance Stroll by a bigger margin than ever and still holds out hope of winning again once he gets into the Newey car. Haas and Sauber each delivered cars capable of running at the front of the midfield, providing the platforms for Oliver Bearman and Gabriel Bortoleto to show great turns of speed. The Sauber even allowed Nico Hülkenberg to take his first podium 15 years after setting his first pole. Alpine was something of an orphan team, running a Renault power unit for the final time and suffering because of it. It was something of a waste of Pierre Gasly’s talents.

So that was the last of the ground effect regulations and the long-running power unit format. The regs may not have fully achieved their aims, but they’ve been the bedrock of the sport as it has transitioned into an altogether higher place commercially than even Bernie Ecclestone ever imagined.

2025 key moments
Pivotal points month by month that shaped the season

Introduction of the MCL39 reveals McLaren to have been very aggressive, with extreme front suspension and new cooling technology.

Ferrari was disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix just a day after Lewis Hamilton won the sprint race. Plank depth infringement the tell-tale of a fundamentally
flawed car.

Norris, Piastri and Verstappen winning the three opening races, signalling who the big-hitters were going to be.

Piastri winning three races on the bounce Bahrain to Miami, putting Norris on the back foot.

Great win for George Russell in Montreal, breaking up the Red Bull/McLaren duopoly.

Piastri’s race-losing 10sec penalty at Silverstone after dominating.

Christian Horner fired from his position of CEO of Red Bull Racing, replaced by Laurent Mekies.

Stunning win for Piastri at Spa after a committed first lap pass on Norris.

Great fight against the odds for Charles Leclerc in Hungary, taking pole and leading the first two stints of the race in the uncompetitive Ferrari.

Piastri’s dominant Zandvoort win and Norris’s smoky retirement puts the Australian 34 points clear at the top.

Monza the beginning of the Verstappen fightback with a very effectively upgraded Red Bull, clearly faster in the race than McLaren.

Piastri under team instructions to hand back second place to Norris after a problem at the latter’s pitstop.

Further Norris/Piastri controversy in Singapore as Russell takes his second win of the season.

Norris hits a rich vein of confident form as Piastri struggles around the low grip surfaces of Austin and Mexico.

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

1962 Austin Mini Riviera

2021 Ford GT ’66 heritage edition

1988 Yamaha XT500

1959 Austin-Healey Sprite

2002 BMW Z3M

1975 Ducati 900SS

1964 Mini Cooper S

1990 Mercedes-Benz 190E EVO II

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Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Born: 07/04/1965, Merano, Italy

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

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Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP

Pre-race at the 1961 Italian GP