McLaren trick to help tyre wear seems tough to replicate for the chasing Mercedes and Red Bull

The British team have backed up their fine winter testing in Bahrain, with five wins in the first six races of 2025, meaning they lead the constructors' championship on 246 points, 105 clear of Mercedes in second place, while Oscar Piastri sits in P1 in the drivers' standings after four wins this campaign.

While Mercedes and Red Bull Racing can still keep up in qualifying, it is especially in tyre wear where McLaren has built a huge advantage that sees them dominate most Sundays.

According to Auto, Motor und Sport, the competition suspects that McLaren are applying a clever trick with their brake cooling system. Photos of the complex brake construction would be on the table at all teams, but no one would know exactly how it works. The German medium, however, states that other F1 teams are experimenting with brake cooling.

The teams' suspicions are focused on the use of so-called phase change materials: substances that change state at a certain temperature (for example, from solid to liquid) and absorb heat in the process. This heat storage is supposed to prevent the tyre temperature from getting too high, crucial on circuits such as Miami or Shanghai, where tyres are heavily stressed. McLaren are doing nothing illegal in this regard, as the FIA has already confirmed multiple times after inspections.

According to the German paper, Red Bull are also working on a similar solution. Max Verstappen complained again about brake problems in Miami, as he has done several times this Formula 1 season. According to AMuS, this could indicate their own experiments with alternative cooling solutions.

Yet, even if the competition now knows what McLaren is doing, copying it has proven not to be easy. As with all innovative solutions, it takes time to adopt them – time the team from Woking can use to score important victories and increase their impressive lead in the championship.