What if we didn't have McLaren in 2025? A deep dive into a shocking parallel universe without the F1's dominant force

The 2025 F1 season is not trending towards a scenario where McLaren is likely to win both championships. There's next to no competition in the constructors, as all three teams are a decent amount behind. It does appear that Max Verstappen has also now fallen behind and would not be in contention for the title.

With that being said, what does an F1 championship in 2025 look like if it did not feature McLaren? Let's take a look.

Methodology: We removed the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri from the classification in every race and then calculated the championship standings. It's fair to say that we had some very interesting findings.

How does an F1 2025 season look without McLaren?

The title fight

Contrary to what might be a common perception, Max Verstappen is not leading the championship in a dominant manner if there is no McLaren, as the standings have the Dutch driver at 210 points but also have George Russell at the same tally.

In the current points system, Verstappen is ahead of Russell by a decent margin of 18 points. That margin gets wiped off in a parallel universe where there is no McLaren on the grid.

Now, wouldn't that be an intriguing F1 championship battle?

The top 5 in the championship standings in this case would be.

The wins

In a world where we don't have McLaren on the grid, there would be as many as four different race winners, with Nico Hulkenberg being a surprise winner. Max Verstappen would have 4 wins to his name, but so would George Russell.

Charles Leclerc would have 3 wins for Ferrari, and Nico Hulkenberg would have a win to his name, with him breaking the duck in Silverstone.

The podiums

The real intrigue lies in examining the number of podiums each driver would have achieved in a world without McLaren. Max Verstappen and George Russell would continue to lead the charts with 9 podiums each.

Lewis Hamilton would have a whopping 5 podiums in a world without McLaren this F1 season, while Alex Albon, Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Ocon bring podiums to their respective midfield teams in this parallel universe.

Lewis Hamilton is the sprint king

Ironically, for a driver who has been quoted as saying, "Sprints don't count," Lewis Hamilton's biggest triumph in a world without McLaren would still be sprints. He would have won both sprints in Miami and China and would have a 100% success record in that format.

How many F1 teams have wins and podiums

In the real world, where McLaren dominates the sport, we have three different teams that have won races, with the other two teams being Red Bull and Mercedes. In a parallel universe without the British team, we would have 4 teams winning races, with Sauber being a race winner as well.

The true difference, however, shines through in the number of podiums, as the current grid already has 50% of the teams having achieved at least one. In a parallel universe, 6 out of 9 teams have been on the rostrum, making it a whopping 66.67% of the entire grid.

Conclusion

Of course, this is nothing more than a fun little exercise in a season where one team appears to have stretched its legs compared to others. It is, however, an interesting view into a parallel world where things could have been quite different had McLaren not found the magic bullet or had others not fallen behind like they have.

Edited by Charanjot Singh Kohli