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For the first time since Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg duked it out for the 2016 crown, the championship looks like being a straight fight between two drivers in the same team.
With Max Verstappen’s hopes fading, the 2025 Formula 1 world drivers’ championship crown increasingly appears destined for one of the two McLaren drivers. But which one?
At the halfway stage in the season in terms of rounds completed, Oscar Piastri leads Lando Norris by just eight points, equivalent to a sixth-place finish in a grand prix.
Piastri hasn’t looked back after making a frustrating start to the season at his home race. He was chasing his team mate for victory when both went off as rain fell; Norris rejoined quickly enough to hold his lead, but Piastri’s spin was more costly and he came in ninth.
Four wins in the next five races put Piastri on top of the pile. Norris had to wait over two months to follow up his Melbourne win, during which time he squandered points chiefly through errors in qualifying as he found McLaren’s car was no longer handling to his liking.
But Norris’s victory before his home crowd at Silverstone was his third win in five events. It was also the second since McLaren introduced revised front suspension components which Piastri is not using.
Has the new suspension proved the breakthrough Norris needed to regain his confidence? Perhaps, but that alone may not be enough, as Piastri is proving a formidable competitor in only his third season of F1.
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Norris won from pole in Austria, but was holding on by his fingertips through the first stint while Piastri threw everything he had at him. That home win came thanks to Piastri’s penalty for a Safety Car infringement, though Norris’s race pace was at least a match for his team mate’s and a slow pit stop cost him a place to Verstappen at one point.
Over the first 10 races of the season, which ended with Norris’s unfathomable collision with his team mate at Montreal, Piastri undoubtedly looked the stronger of the two McLaren drivers. But the last two rounds should give Norris cause to believe he can take the fight all the way to the final race.
Norris vs Piastri: Summary
Norris vs Piastri: Race-by-race
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Norris vs Piastri: One-lap pace
Unrepresentative comparisons omitted. Negative value: Norris was faster; Positive value: Piastri was faster
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