We were the top-scoring team at the first nine rounds of the season, and while you’re always committed to keeping a run like that going, you know at some point, it’s likely to come to an end. The important thing is how you then react afterwards.

After a more challenging Canadian Grand Prix, where we failed to score a podium for the first time in 2025, we needed a good response in Austria. We got it with a 1-2 finish. Lando missed FP1, with Alex Dunne fulfilling one of our rookie requirements, but after that it was Lando all the way: fastest in second practice, third practice, in each Qualifying session and on Pole by over half a second.

Oscar qualified third but was every bit his equal in the race, as the two had a great battle out front in the first stint, with Oscar briefly taking the lead, and plenty of side-by-side racing up and down the DRS straight. Lando held on for the win, but Oscar pushed him all the way and took the fastest lap. 

While the team would never take a front-row lockout for granted, having been one-two in all three practice sessions, and with a couple of tenths in hand, it came as a little bit of a surprise to see Charles Leclerc take Pole in Hungary with a monster lap. Oscar was alongside him, with Lando in P3.

After dropping to P5 at the start, Lando opted to risk the unfancied one-stop strategy, and he landed on his feet, emerging in first. With 19 laps to go, Oscar was up into P2, 8.238s behind Lando. Both drivers pushed for all they were worth as Lando won by 0.698s, while Oscar had put more than 20 seconds between himself and the chasing pack.

The British Grand Prix is the only wet race on the list – though the pace of the car in the rain was established at the first race of the season, when the cars pulled out an 18s lead in the first 25 racing laps before a Safety Car brought the field back together.

Silverstone was a more fragmented race, beginning with two early Virtual Safety Cars before the 10th lap, followed by several full Safety Car periods from Laps 11 to 21. When they finally got going again, Oscar was leading ahead of Lando and Lance Stroll. The MCL39s pulled away rapidly, building up a gap of well over 25 seconds. There was a late transition to slicks and a 10-second penalty for Oscar, which dropped him to second, but neither dented the final size of the gap.

Mexico was a rare example in 2025 of a race where the Soft tyre start was preferred. The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez has a very, very long run down to the first corner, and it’s a track at which overtaking is difficult. The Soft tyre has a huge advantage in start-line grip, and so it’s the choice tyre to defend and lock-in a position early on.

Pirelli suggested that the optimum pit window was between Laps 23 and 29, but Lando’s pace out front was so strong that he was able to watch all of his competitors pit before him, eventually coming in on Lap 34. Having done half the race on a Soft tyre, he was able to push all the way to the end on the Medium. Lando did the whole stint in the mid-1m21s bracket, whilst others were forced to manage their rubber and built up a huge buffer over Charles Leclerc in second.

The biggest gap of the year came in Miami, which was, fittingly, our most dominant weekend of the season. We finished 1-2 in the Sprint, followed by another 1-2 finish in the race, the first time in F1 history that this has been achieved.

On the Saturday, it was Lando ahead of Oscar, but the order reversed on Sunday. Oscar won the race by 4.630s from Lando, who had a gap of 33.014s back to George Russell in third. A perfect 58 points took our Constructor’s Championship lead up above 100 points and maintained our record of being the top-scoring team at every round. Achieved at a quarter of the way through the 24-round calendar, it was a real statement victory.