As Formula One enters the final third of the season, the fight for the drivers’ championship is at an exciting stage. Before the previous round in Azerbaijan, it seemed as if the battle would be between McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, with the former ahead by 31 points.
But around the streets of Baku, Piastri produced one of the most shocking performances from a title contender in recent memory. The Australian, who had not qualified outside the top four in 2025, crashed in the final part of qualifying to start ninth.
Gloomy weekend
On Sunday, he compounded his misery. His race lasted less than a minute, during which he made a series of errors. He jumped the start and stalled the car on the grid, trying to correct it, which left him last before the first corner. Piastri then binned his vehicle into the barriers a few seconds later, and retired to end a streak of 44 race finishes.
For someone who has largely been excellent, the 24-year-old looked like a rookie driving an F1 car for the first time and not someone who has won seven of 17 races so far.
If Piastri had a nightmarish weekend, Norris failed to capitalise on his rival’s slip-ups and fumbled an open goal. Even though McLaren was not at its usual best, Norris did not cover himself in glory.
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He messed up his final run in qualifying, finishing seventh, and struggled to make inroads in the race. He even dropped a position after the Safety Car restart, caught napping by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Although he got past Leclerc after the pit-stop, he ate into Piastri’s lead by just six points when he could have made a bigger dent. It once again raises the question of whether Norris has what it takes to be a world champion.
It has been an eventful last three rounds for McLaren since the summer break. In Zandvoort, Norris’ power unit failure cost him 18 points and swelled Piastri’s advantage to 34. But since then, in Monza and Baku, the team has had to contend with a resurgent Max Verstappen and Red Bull. The reigning champion has won two races on the bounce and is suddenly threatening to poke a spanner in the wheels of what was an intra-team battle for the crown.
The Red Bull has been the quickest on both the low-downforce tracks that have long straights and short corners. These circuits don’t play to the strengths of the McLaren, which is more suited to traditional layouts that are dominated by medium- and high-speed corners.
Verstappen, who was 104 points behind Piastri after the Dutch GP, has trimmed the deficit to 69. He now has a path to a record fifth consecutive championship, with seven races (and three sprint events) left and 199 points up for grabs.
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While Verstappen is still an outside shot, the fact that he has brought himself back into contention has reiterated conventional wisdom in the paddock. The prevailing sentiment is that the Dutchman is the standout driver so far, and that, regardless of which McLaren driver wins, neither can claim to have been the best this year.
After Verstappen’s victory in Italy, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella sounded the warning bells about Red Bull’s newfound competitiveness, saying his team couldn’t take for granted that it would seal both titles.
Feeling the pressure
Intriguingly, McLaren is also feeling the pressure because it has two top drivers who have taken points off each other, with neither able to pull ahead decisively. As long as the team was confident that one of its drivers would triumph, it had no reason to put its thumb on the scale and was happy to let them race. However, now that policy can come under stress.
Even though McLaren is all set to defend its constructors’ title — potentially as early as this weekend in Singapore — Stella’s wariness about Verstappen’s seemingly long-shot bid betrays a lack of faith in his stars and validates the belief that the 28-year-old is the gold standard.
Both Piastri and Norris have dropped the ball on a few occasions, allowing Verstappen to steal victories. In Japan, the McLaren drivers did not maximise their qualifying, allowing Verstappen to nick pole and control the race from the front. In Imola, Piastri got mugged by the four-time champion, who pulled off an impressive overtaking manoeuvre at the start.
The Australian has also made costly errors. At his home race, he ran wide in the wet, which dropped him from second to ninth. He squandered 16 points there, and, in Silverstone, Piastri lost the victory and another seven points after getting a 10-second penalty for erratic driving behind the Safety Car when leading comfortably. Those 23 points alone could have given him a much more comfortable cushion in the standings.
Who can seize the moment? Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris have their destiny in their hands. While they won’t threaten Verstappen’s status, they are in prime position to claim his crown.
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On the other hand, Norris has not been sufficiently clinical in a year in which his car has been the outright fastest on most tracks. He has been inconsistent, timid in wheel-to-wheel battles and error-prone. Among his five wins, fortune favoured him in the British GP and in Hungary, where he received a better strategy than his teammate, who was running ahead of him.
In a sport where machinery is the major determinant of who clinches the drivers’ title, a Verstappen triumph will be unprecedented, considering Red Bull has been between the second- and fourth-fastest team on average, barring the last two events.
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Even in 2024, it was Verstappen’s relentless consistency in the first half, despite not always having the fastest car, that allowed him the buffer to repel a late charge from Norris.
Looking back at recent history, the last time F1 saw a credible title challenge from someone not piloting the fastest machinery was back in 2012, when Fernando Alonso dragged a third-best Ferrari to within three points of the big prize that Sebastian Vettel ultimately won in a dominant Red Bull. Alonso’s 2012 season is widely considered one of the finest campaigns by a driver, and Verstappen’s 2025 effort is sure to be slotted among those.
Adding to his CV
Irrespective of the outcome this season, Verstappen will emerge with his reputation enhanced and a ticket to be included among the pantheon of greats. He further burnished his motorsport credentials last weekend, mastering a completely different format and series. He won his debut GT3 race at the famously difficult Nordschleife in the Nurburgring Endurance Series, in a car that is diametrically opposite to single-seater machines.
But Piastri and Norris still have their destiny in their hands. One of them can still alter how he is perceived. While neither will threaten Verstappen’s status as the best on the grid, they are in prime position to claim his crown — and history remembers champions. If one of them gets the job done with a run of convincing performances, he will be considered a worthy winner who dethroned an all-time great.
