Oscar Piastri vs Lando Norris: How 2025 F1 title battle between McLaren pair could be decided over final 10 rounds | F1 News

As Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris prepare to resume their battle for the 2025 world championship, Sky Sports F1 analyse the key areas that will decide who comes out on top.

Piastri leads his McLaren team-mate Norris by nine points ahead of this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, the first of 10 remaining rounds after the sport’s summer break.

McLaren have designed a car that appears to be similarly dominant to the Red Bulls of recent years, but whereas Max Verstappen didn’t have a team-mate capable of challenging him, Piastri and Norris are incredibly closely matched.

They have four pole positions each so far this season, while Piastri leads Norris 6-5 in grand prix victories. Norris has the sole Sprint win claimed by McLaren this year.

The battle has ebbed and flowed with Piastri overturning an early deficit to build a decent advantage of his own, before Norris hit back with three wins in four races before the break to reignite his challenge.

With the momentum reset after almost a month off, here are the factors that look set to decide the outcome of the battle.

Who do the remaining tracks suit?

While F1 drivers are going to impress on any piece of tarmac you put them on, they also undoubtedly have their favourites when it comes to the sport’s circuits.

It’s therefore worth considering whether the 10 remaining venues tilt the balance in either direction.

The thing that makes such an assessment difficult is Piastri’s remarkable improvement from last year. We’ve already seen the Australian turn the tables on Norris at tracks where he was comprehensively outperformed by the Brit last year.

It therefore potentially makes more sense to look at how Norris, whose level doesn’t appear to have altered so dramatically, got on in 2024 at the remaining venues.

In terms of qualifying pace, Norris was mighty from the break onwards last year, claiming six poles in the final 10 rounds of the season.

His inability to keep the lead on the first lap of races meant he turned just three of the poles into victories, but the way he dominated on occasions – most memorably in the Netherlands and Singapore – could give him fond memories to recall at those circuits.

Piastri won in Azerbaijan last year, but that is the only remaining track he’ll arrive at knowing he has triumphed in a grand prix there before.

The psychological battle

The protagonists in this title battle are very different characters.

Piastri, the iceman, rarely shows any emotion over team radio or during interviews with the media. Norris is the opposite, expressing himself freely both in and out of the car.

Piastri’s approach is one that is more traditionally associated with sporting success, while, in contrast, some have questioned whether Norris’ habit of berating himself offers encouragement to his rivals.

Norris appears to have been able to keep a steadier temperament in recent times, offering less dramatic soundbites than he tended to do in the past.

Piastri can largely be relied upon to maintain his focus, but there have been recent examples of the intensity of the situation impacting his decision-making, with the Australian almost driving into Norris in the closing stages of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Given Piastri’s remarkable calmness, the variant here in this area is more likely to be Norris, and whether he will thrive as the pressure continues to ramp up over the coming weeks.

He produced one of the best performances of his career to date to seal the Constructors’ Championship for McLaren in the final race of last year in Abu Dhabi, so there’s reason to believe his best form might be to come.

Qualifying more decisive than ever?

There are a couple of factors that can be combined to create a strong argument for qualifying being more important in this situation than any other recent title battle.

Firstly, with the 2025 cars being the last under these design regulations, they’ve been so expertly developed by the teams that following and overtaking have become extremely difficult.

The pace advantage needed to pull off an on-track pass at most circuits is considerable.

Given that Piastri and Norris are closely matched and drive the same car, the chances of either making a pass on the other are dramatically reduced after the first lap.

Norris’ attempt to pass Piastri in Canada resulted in a collision, and the same nearly happened when the situation was reversed in Hungary.

There’s also the fact that McLaren will give strategic priority to whichever driver is ahead on track, which often will prove to be a major advantage.

We saw an exception in Hungary as Norris won after gambling on an alternative second-choice strategy, but that situation came about partly because there were a couple of cars between the McLarens.

In situations where they are running a clear one and two, which we have seen regularly, McLaren are unlikely to want to cause possible unrest within the team by overly mixing up the strategies.

Could reliability become a factor?

We’re really not trying to jinx them, but McLaren have put together a pretty remarkable reliability record in recent times.

Their only retirement of last season came when Norris collided with Verstappen in Austria, and the team’s only DNF so far this year was when Norris retired after making contact with Piastri in Canada.

So, McLaren’s last pure reliability retirement came in the first race of the 2023 season, when Piastri had to retire in Bahrain with electronic issues.

If either driver were to suffer the misfortune of a reliability issue in a race, it could prove decisive in the title battle given how consistently McLaren have been occupying the top positions.

They have both already introduced all four of their allotted power units for the season, which means either driver taking another one would result in a grid penalty.

It’s normal for teams to have introduced all four power units by this stage and to then rotate them for the remainder of the season, but it’s also possible an extra engine could be required at some point.

Even if a power unit issue was to arise in a practice session, the knock-on effect could be significant if one of the pair had to start a race towards the back of the grid.

Formula 1 returns after the summer break with the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort on August 29-31, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime