It’s tough not to overstate just how unfathomable the current positioning at the top of the F1 drivers’ championship was just two months ago. Rewind four races and Max Verstappen trailed Oscar Piastri by 104 points. For all intents and purposes, it was a McLaren intra-team title battle. A surefire thing. Whether it be Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris, the winner in Abu Dhabi on 7 December would be adorned in bright papaya.
Now, the outlook is not so black and white. Indeed, now the future looks like a blanket of orange, with dark blue and red splattered all over it. An individual title which looked genuinely unlosable for McLaren, such was their irrepressible dominance for most of this season, is now in danger of a catastrophic collapse.
For Verstappen, who had long dismissed his chances of a fifth consecutive title (a feat only matched by Michael Schumacher before him), it was the perfect sprint weekend in Austin. Two pole positions, two race wins, and a maximum 33 points to his name. Even the Dutchman, who has at times been visibly unbothered by this season’s trials and tribulations at Red Bull, is now licking his lips.
“For sure, the The awkward McLaren F1 title question fuelling Max Verstappen’s comeback chance is there,” he told Martin Brundle below the podium, immediately after his dominant victory at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday. “We just need to try and deliver these kinds of weekends until the end. It’s exciting and I’m excited until the end.”
Verstappen’s gap is now 40 points to Piastri, with five races left and 141 points to play for. Norris, who at least recovered from a slow start to finish second on Sunday, is just 14 points off his teammate. Out of nothing, the tide is turning dramatically against the previously unflappable Australian.
“The pressure builds when things start going wrong; it’s difficult to find your way out of that scenario,” 2009 F1 world champion and ex-McLaren driver Jenson Button told Sky Sports. “This is pressure no racing driver feels until you’re fighting for a title in Formula One.”
Button can empathise with Piastri’s plight. Back in ’09, the Briton inched his way over the finish line, failing to win any of the last 10 races in a freak year of dominance by the one-and-done Brawn team.
A more relevant year for McLaren would be 2007: Lewis Hamilton’s rookie year, in which the toxic intra-team feud with Fernando Alonso ultimately resulted in Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen nipping in at the death to take the drivers’ title by one point. It is a scenario that should be omnipresent in the minds of McLaren CEO Zak Brown and team principal Andrea Stella, as they look to arrest this current slide.
In the McLaren motorhome, all is not well. The Austin weekend started with the borderline ludicrous discussion around ‘repercussions’ for Norris, following his minor contact with Piastri at the last race in Singapore. McLaren didn’t act then, nor did the stewards.
Why the need to stoke the fire a fortnight on? Why give half a story, without specifying what such ‘repercussions’ are? While teams are of course allowed to keep discreet matters in-house, the level of ambiguity was jarring.
The general understanding amongst the paddock is that the ‘repercussions’ mean minor sporting advantages will lean in Piastri’s favour. Say, for instance, a tow in qualifying for the Australian, at venues with long straights such as round 21 in Las Vegas, to give Piastri an extra speed boost for pole position.
The whole discussion, however, was thrust further into the spotlight after a torrid weekend in which both McLaren drivers collided and crashed out of the sprint race on Saturday. If anything, this time it was Piastri who was at fault. We await media day in Mexico for any developments on driver preference.
It is a can of worms that, to a large degree, was avoidable. McLaren could still have a decision on their hands: they could still make either Piastri or Norris their No 1 driver, to increase their chances of stopping Verstappen. But they won’t; it’s too far gone now. Even Piastri knows it.
“I dunno, I don’t think so,” the Australian replied when asked if McLaren should make him No 1 after his fifth-place finish on Sunday. “We’re still incredibly tight. We both wanted an opportunity to fight for the championship because we deserve it. I think it’s far too close to start picking one or the other.”
Fighting talk? Not exactly. Piastri, on track, has definitely hit a rut at just the wrong time. He complained all weekend of feeling “out of rhythm” with the car, seemingly struggling with the heavy crosswinds more than most in qualifying. Lacking in confidence, the 24-year-old needs a reset – and fast heading into Mexico next weekend.
Yet the McLaren creaks are starting to rear their head. If anything, despite the points discrepancy, Norris appears best-placed right now to seize the initiative. Certainly, the team (particularly Piastri) need to get back to consistent podiums at a minimum. There’s a championship to win – a first drivers’ crown since Hamilton in 2008 – and they are the ones with the points on the board. Norris could well have passed Verstappen in Austin’s grand prix if he hadn’t ceded second place to Charles Leclerc at the start. The Dutchman’s newfound jolt of speed at Red Bull is not insurmountable.
But make no mistake: there is a caffeine-induced, title-hungry energy drink surging up behind McLaren right now. Red Bull’s subtle mechanical upgrades, such as moving the skid blocks underneath the floor of the car to improve the aerodynamics, have given their leading man a new lease of life.
A far-flung Verstappen title assault has now diverged into a genuine three-horse race for the championship. And with favourable races on the horizon where the Dutchman has triumphed before – Mexico, Brazil and Vegas all favour him on paper – it seems an incredulous, unprecedented comeback really could be in the offing.
