The timing could not have been more piercing for Lando Norris. Just as the crestfallen McLaren driver trudged back to the Zandvoort pit-lane, Oscar Piastri was introduced onto the top step of the podium as the winner of the Dutch Grand Prix. The Brit was not hanging around for the national anthems; emotions and those papaya colours could not have been more juxtaposed.
Norris’s cruel retirement from second in the field on Sunday with eight laps to go, the result of an oil leak due to a suspected chassis issue, has changed the whole complexion of this season’s F1 championship race. A gap to teammate Piastri, which was at nine points pre-race – and was set to increase to 16 – now stands at 34 points. In a campaign of fine margins between the McLaren duo, it is a game-changing moment.
The scenario brought back memories from nine years ago, in a similar intra-team title battle between the Mercedes duo of Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. Leading the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix comfortably with 15 laps to go, Hamilton suffered an engine failure and from a forecasted lead of five points, the Brit then trailed Rosberg by 23.
As a sign of the task ahead for Norris, Hamilton won four of the remaining five races and still couldn’t claw back the deficit. On that day in Sepang, Hamilton’s cry of “oh no, no!” over team radio after his mechanical breakdown became the memorable soundbite of the season.
This year, Norris’s head slumped between his knees while sitting solemnly on the Zandvoort sand dunes could be the season-defining image of F1 in 2025. For what it’s worth, Norris’s immediate reaction on team radio was not one of utter exasperation. Instead, it was begrudging acceptance that fate was, in similarity to last year’s title tilt, not swinging his way.
Admirably, his reflections in the media pen were level-headed: “Of course it’s frustrating. It hurts for sure, in a championship point of view. It’s a lot of points to lose so quickly and so easily. But there’s nothing I can control now, so I’ll just take it on the chin and move on.”
Of course, the title battle is far from over. There are nine races – and three sprint races – left and 249 points still to play for. If Norris won the next five races and Piastri came second, the Briton would overtake the Australian with four races left. A tall order, sure, but definitely achievable. Rather more simply (but unlikely) is that a mechanical issue could impact Piastri too, as the season draws to a close.
Yet the impact of a DNF at this stage of the season is seismic. Since F1 changed the point-scoring system in 2010 – from 10 points for the winner and the top-eight scoring points to 25 points for the winner and the top-10 scoring points – titles have often been decided by the modern-day anomaly of a retirement for a front-of-the-pack car. As well as 2016, Hamilton’s error in Azerbaijan in 2021 effectively cost him 25 points, which would have also handed him a world championship regardless of the Abu Dhabi controversy at the finale.
But the wider significance of Norris’s desperate case of rotten luck makes for an intriguing run-in. On one hand, to an extent, Piastri can now play it safe. The cool-headed Aussie can mitigate any risk, turn up engine modes for reliability and, where necessary, accept not winning, with his buffer now more than a grand prix victory.
Yet with that advantage comes a different type of pressure. In the heat of the moment, will Piastri be able to curb all his racing instincts and take no chances? In just his third season in F1, will a title within his grasp finally show chinks in his armoury? All the signs so far suggest not.
“Like we say in cricket, we’d rather have the runs on the board than not,” said Piastri’s manager Mark Webber, who himself missed out on a world title to Red Bull teammate Sebastian Vettel in 2010.
“But there’s a long way to go – we’ve got races like Brazil, where it rains. We’ve got Singapore, Azerbaijan, which are street circuits where anything can happen.”
And this plays to the other side of the coin. As he alluded to after the race, Norris can now move forward and race the rest of the season with the handbrake off. In one way, it makes the Bristolian’s task all the more simple.
“It’s almost a big enough gap now that I can just chill out and just go for it,” he said. It may be no bad thing that the next race comes around quickly, with the Italian Grand Prix at Monza this weekend.
“The only thing I can do now is try to win every race,” he added. “That’s going to be difficult but I’ll make sure I give it everything I can.”
It’s not Norris’s natural style to go hell-for-leather. Last year, he was criticised for his inability to strike an unsentimental tone on the racetrack and in the media pen up against Max Verstappen.
But there’s now no reason not to. Even the much-maligned “papaya rules” stance of the McLaren team can somewhat be ignored. If he gets involved in a close skirmish with Piastri now on track, so what? The risk is Piastri’s, not his.
To his credit, and in a somewhat bizarre snapshot, Norris was present for McLaren’s customary race-winning photo. He put on a brave face, raised a fist, and smiled. He must have been seething inside.
Yet now he must change his amiable disposition, the habit of a lifetime, and find a hard-nosed edge. Otherwise, for the second consecutive year, a maiden title within his reach will race away into the yonder.
