McLaren can etch itself further into Formula One history at this weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix. If it wins the Baku race with a 1-2, it will seal the 2025 season's constructors' championship.

There are other ways it can get there, given the team's stranglehold on the constructors' points standings since early in the year. But taking an eighth 1-2 grand prix finish of the season (the most for a single team since the nine Mercedes scored in 2019) means it doesn't matter what its opposition does.

For the current McLaren team, this particular race marks a crucial moment in their recent history.

It was on the streets of Azerbaijan's capital a year ago, with Oscar Piastri's impressive second F1 win, that McLaren usurped Red Bull atop the F1 points standings -- the first time any other team had been in such a position since Miami 2022 (Ferrari). "It's an event which still holds special relevance for us," as a result, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said in the team's preview statement for the upcoming edition.

Here's exactly how McLaren can take a 10th overall constructors' title this weekend, 12 months on from Piastri's blistering victory here against Ferrari's Charles Leclerc.

McLaren currently has 617 points in the 2025 constructors' championship. Second is Ferrari on 280 (337 behind), with Mercedes third on 260 (357 back). Italian GP winner Red Bull is fourth, with 239 points (378 adrift of top spot). A massive 96 percent of the latter's points come from Max Verstappen's haul of 230 so far.

Winning Baku 1-2 is not the only way McLaren can be sure of its own destiny in title terms this weekend. If it is victorious with one driver and third with the other, the team seals the constructors' championship too.

Otherwise, with 346 points left from seven grands prix and three sprint races remaining after Azerbaijan, McLaren must outscore Ferrari by nine points, maintaining its existing lead over Mercedes and Red Bull.

These two teams need bigger point swings just to stay in the hunt after this weekend, whatever happens.

If McLaren beats Ferrari by those nine points and doesn't lose any more than 11 or 32 to Mercedes and Red Bull, respectively, then it still claims the title. No team can topple McLaren on victory count given the current gap, as it has already won 12 grands prix this year, with only seven left after Baku.

A Ferrari win this weekend or a Mercedes 1-2 would guarantee the championship battle goes on, but this one-sided fight would almost certainly be wrapped up next time out in Singapore in two weeks, in any case.

But if, as seems most likely, McLaren does wrap things up this weekend, it will achieve a unique piece of F1 history.

Winning with seven rounds left would make it the earliest a team has wrapped up the constructors' championship when looking at the remaining events of an F1 calendar.

In purely date terms, McLaren has missed out on surpassing its own record for the earliest time to clinch the championship in a calendar year. That record was set on August 28, 1988, when it secured the crown with the famous MP4-4 car, driven by F1 legends Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, at the Belgian Grand Prix. Senna also won the drivers' title later that year.

By winning with seven rounds left in 2025, McLaren would eclipse Red Bull's achievement from two years ago, when it did so with six events remaining.

It would be the only time other than 1988 and 2004 (when Michael Schumacher-led Ferrari cruised to a title double that year) that the constructors' championship has ended with more than 25 percent of a season remaining. McLaren's 1988 record of 31.25 percent still holds overall.

The current campaign, however, is closer in terms of pure pace than 2023 was.

That reflects how Red Bull's triumphant season could've been even more impressive had Sergio Pérez been able to stay closer to drivers' title-bound teammate Verstappen regularly (although he was still miles nearer the Dutchman than any of his replacements have been in the two years since) and how good McLaren has been to move clear of the pack in 2025.

After all, the 2024 constructors' battle was not settled until Lando Norris' McLaren crossed the finish line first at the Abu Dhabi season finale, with Carlos Sainz and Leclerc pursuing hard in second and third for eventual runner-up Ferrari.

Seven races early: McLaren's scenarios for an F1 title clinch in Azerbaijan