Oscar Piastri against Lando Norris: How the Battle of the title of 2025 F1 between the McLaren pair could be decided during the last 10 laps | F1 News

While Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris are preparing to resume their battle for the 2025 world championship, Sky Sports F1 Analyze the key areas that will decide that will come out in mind.

Piastri leads his teammate McLaren Norris nine points before the Dutch Grand Prix of this weekend, the first of the remaining 10 rounds after the summer holidays of sport.

McLaren has designed a car that seems just as dominant for the Red Bulls in recent years, but while Max Verstappen had no teammate capable of challenging it, Piastri and Norris are incredibly equal.

Until now, they have four pole positions so far this season, while Piastri leads Norris 6-5 in the victories of the Grand Prix. Norris has the only Sprint victory claimed by McLaren this year.

The battle reflected and sank with Piastri overturning an early deficit to build his own decent advantage, before Norris retredient with three victories in four races before the break to rekindle his challenge.

With the reset of the momentum after almost a month of leave, here are the factors that seem ready to decide the outcome of the battle.

Who is suitable for the remaining tracks?

While the F1 pilots will impress on any piece of Tarmac on which you put them, they undoubtedly have their favorites with regard to the sports circuits.

It is therefore worth considering if the 10 remaining places include balance in both directions.

What makes such a difficult assessment is the remarkable improvement of Piastri compared to last year. We have already seen the Australian shoot the Tables of Norris on tracks where he was outperformed in a global way by the Briton last year.

It is therefore potentially more logical to see how Norris, whose level does not seem to have changed spectacularly, took place in 2024 in the remaining places.

In terms of qualification rhythm, Norris was powerful from the break last year, claiming six posts in the last 10 laps of the season.

His inability to keep his head in the first round of races meant that he only transformed three of the posts into victories, but the way he dominated the occasions – the most memorable in the Netherlands and in Singapore – could give him good memories to recall in these circuits.

Piastri won in Azerbaijan last year, but it is the only remaining track for which he will arrive knowing that he triumphed in a Grand Prix there before.

The psychological battle

The protagonists of this title battle are very different characters.

Piastri, the Iceman, rarely shows any emotion on team radio or during interviews with the media. Norris is the opposite, speaking freely both in and out of the car.

Piastri’s approach is that which is more traditionally associated with sporting success, while, on the other hand, some have wondered if Norris’s habit of reprimanding himself offers encouragement to his rivals.

Norris seems to have been able to keep a more stable temperament in recent times, offering bits of his less dramatic than he tended to do it in the past.

Piastri can be largely invoked to maintain its objective, but there have been recent examples of the intensity of the situation having an impact on his decision -making, the Australian almost driving himself to Norris in the last stages of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Given the remarkable calm of Piastri, the variant here in this area is more likely to be Norris, and if it will prosperate when the pressure continues to progress in the coming weeks.

He produced one of the best performances of his career to date to seal the manufacturers’ championship for McLaren in last year’s last year in Abu Dhabi, so there are reasons to believe that his best form could be to come.

Do you qualify more decisive than ever?

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

First, the 2025 cars being the last under these design regulations, they were so strongly developed by the teams that the consequences and the overruns have become extremely difficult.

The advantage of the rhythm necessary to make a pass on track in most of the circuits is considerable.

Since Piastri and Norris are closely adapted and lead the same car, the chances of making a pass on the other are considerably reduced after the first round.

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

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

We saw an exception in Hungary while Norris won after playing on an alternative strategy at the second choice, but this situation came in part because there were some cars between the McLarens.

In situations where they execute one and two, which we have noticed regularly, McLaren is unlikely to want to cause any disorders within the team by mixing strategies too much.

Could reliability become a factor?

We really don’t try the Jinx, but McLaren has made a fairly remarkable reliability record lately.

Their only retirement last season occurred when Norris collided with Verstappen in Austria, and the only DNF of the team so far this year has been when Norris retired after contacting Piastri in Canada.

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

If one or the other driver was to suffer from the misfortune of a reliability problem in a race, this could prove to be decisive in the battle of the title given the way in which McLaren occupied the main positions.

They have already introduced their four food units allocated for the season, which means that one or the other driver by taking another would cause a grid penalty.

It is normal for the teams to introduce the four feed units at this stage and to rotate them for the rest of the season, but it is also possible that an additional engine is necessary at a given time.

Even if an electric unit problem was to arise during a training session, the training effect could be significant if one of the pairs had to start a race towards the back of the grid.

Formula 1 returns after the summer holidays with the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort on August 29-31, live Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with now – no contract, cancel at any time