F1 returns at the Dutch GP this weekend with a super close title battle between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. The pair are separated by just 9 points heading into it. At the moment the Aussie holds the advantage.
Pit Debrief takes a look at the strengths and weaknesses of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri with 10 rounds to go.
Qualifying pace
Lando Norris | Ana-Maria Andronic
In terms of performance during qualifying sessions so far this season, Lando Norris showed real improvement. The 2025 season began with him claiming the first pole position at the opening round in Australia. The Briton edged out his teammate, converting that P1 into a great victory.
No pain, no gain for Norris
While he began his seventh season in F1 with a pole position in Melbourne, his luck ran out quite fast. Despite ongoing issues with his MCL39 during flying laps, he still managed to stay close to Piastri. Even in the earlier rounds, where he missed out on pole during Q3, Norris still put up a fierce battle in Q1 and Q3.
The F1 Chinese GP is a great example of this phenomenon. In Q2, he put half a second between his time and Piastri’s. Yet, his decision to bail out of his lap in Q3 saw him miss out on a very possible P1. Additionally, every time he finished anywhere but P1 during qualifying, he was just a couple of hundredths off.
A commanding lap around Monte Carlo
Nevertheless, these results did not affect his confidence. As Lando Norris took every missed opportunity and learned his lessons, his performance during qualifying improved. The round, which properly showcased the Briton in his prime, was the Monaco GP.
When the starting position mattered most, he pulled through immensely. Even when Charles Leclerc was the favourite for pole after the FP sessions, Norris’ faith did not falter once. Furthermore, the Briton took that pole and held onto it with all his might, becoming a race winner yet again.
Unstoppable in Austria
Whenever his teammate qualified in a better position than Norris, it was by a few hundredths or even thousandths. And even more noteworthy, Lando Norris was always fighting all the way into Q3, never out in the earlier stages. The F1 Austrian GP was probably his most formidable qualifying performance.
Coming from Montreal with new and improved forces, Norris dominated the grid. The McLaren driver secured pole position with a commanding half a second gap between himself and P2. In fact, this proved to be the biggest pole margin of the 2025 season so far.
Improvements all around for the Brit
Another qualifying masterclass from Lando Norris showcased itself during the F1 Belgian GP. While the Briton was initially leading the pack at the end of Q1, Piastri sniped that position from him in Q2. However, Norris showed absolute determination and prowess as he stormed into provisional pole in Q3. His impressive time was unbeatable, no matter how hard anyone tried to overtake it.
As Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri managed to come forward as the 2025 F1 world champion prospects, their battles start from qualifying. With great resolve and persistence, Norris pushed through hardships, and his recent accomplishments during those qualifying sessions are only the beginning.
Oscar Piastri | Olivia Pursehouse
When putting the McLaren drivers head to head in qualifying pace, it is clear to see that Piastri pips Norris. Out of the 14 qualifying sessions we have seen this year so far, Piastri has qualified higher than Norris on nine occasions. While Norris has out qualified Piastri on six occasions, Piastri continues to leave a smaller gap to Norris ahead, then Norris does when qualifying behind Piastri.
The Chinese GP
After his teammate beat him to pole by a mere 0.084s in Melbourne, Piastri fought back in Shanghai, claiming pole position. Piastri secured pole position with a 1:30.641, 0.82 seconds ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell in P2 and 0.152s ahead of Norris is P2. This was almost double the gap that Norris had on him in Melbourne. Piastri had also out-performed Norris in the earlier Sprint qualifying that weekend, when he claimed P3 with a 1:30.929, 0.464 seconds ahead of Norris who managed only P6.
The Bahrain GP
The McLarens were beat to pole in Japan, having to settle for P2 and P3, Piastri only 0.032s behind Norris. Once again bouncing back just a race later in Bahrain, Piastri beat his teammate to pole yet again. Almost as if it was predetermined, Norris qualified behind Piastri with a much larger gap of 0.426s.
The Imola GP
Although neither driver secured pole position in Saudi Arabia or Miami, Piastri flaunted his qualifying ability. In Saudi Arabia, Piastri secured P2, while Norris landed back in P10, after an incident in Q2 saw him unable to take part in Q3. Miami on the other hand, saw Norris qualified just ahead of Piastri, although Piastri remained only 0.106s down.
The Spanish GP
In the second round of the triple header—Monaco— Piastri qualified P3, 0.175s behind Norris on pole. Bouncing back in the final round of the triple header, Piastri took pole position 0.209s ahead of Norris who qualified P2. This showed Piastri had far more qualifying pace, in order to qualify a single position ahead of Norris, but almost a quarter of a second quicker than him.
A slight twist in the season
On the other end of the spectrum, Silverstone saw a drop in Piastri’s qualifying pace in comparison to Norris. While Piastri qualified ahead in P2, Norris was only 0.015s behind in P3.
Belgium saw a return to Piastri’s qualifying abilities. While Norris pipped him for position yet again, it was only by 0.085s.
The most recent round in Hungary saw the McLaren drivers’ qualifying pace begin to get closer together. Piastri found himself qualifying in P2, 0.015s ahead of Norris in P3.
Overall qualifying form
When taking all 14 races into consideration, I believe it is clear that Piastri has stronger qualifying pace. This will greatly benefit him in his battle for the Championship, against his own teammate. qualifying ahead, in turn with finishing ahead of Norris is absolutely crucial for the Australian if he plans to be crowned 2025 F1 World Champion.
Race pace
Lando Norris | Chloe Meehan
Throughout the 2025 season, Norris has shown his speed across every Grand Prix weekend. Although Piastri has often had the edge in qualifying, Norris has matched him where it matters most – race results. Both drivers have finished ahead of the other seven times this year. Whilst Piastri may hold the slight edge on one-lap speed, points are scored on Sunday. Norris’s skill set helps him transform his raw speed into a solid race pace.
Progress in races
In wheel-to-wheel battles, Norris has displayed skill and tactical awareness. At the Saudi Arabian GP, Norris hit the wall during Q3, which put an end to his qualifying for the weekend. This mistake meant that he would start in P10, whilst Oscar Piastri started in P2. Whilst you would expect the MCL39 to make some solid overtakes, Norris’ skill and pace saw him work his way through the field up to P4. Despite having to fight his way through the grid, he was only 9.19 seconds behind Piastri.
Controlling the race
However, Norris is not just strong in recovery drives. He also excels at controlling races from the front. He has been able to convert pole position to a win on 3 out of 4 occasions. These victories happened in Australia, Monaco, and Austria. This marks a clear step forward from last season, when he often struggled to convert qualifying performance into race dominance.
Oscar Piastri | Shania Wallage
Piastri has demonstrated a clear step forward in race pace during the 2025 season, particularly through improved tyre management. This strength has translated into greater consistency, with Piastri and Norris engaged in closely fought battles throughout the first half of the season, often maintaining competitive lap times over long stints.
Aside from a mistake in Melbourne, where rain caused him to slide off the track and onto the grass, he has only finished off the podium on one other occasion this season. He has also scored points in every race, unlike teammate Lando Norris, who failed to finish after colliding with Piastri in the closing laps of the Canadian Grand Prix.
Doing it from the second row
In Miami, his race pace was evident in the Grand Prix race. After losing out in the Sprint, due to an untimely Safety Car, he bounced back to claim the Grand Prix victory, doing so from his lowest starting position of the season, P4. Although Verstappen was also in the mix, Piastri handled the pressure from the reigning champion far more effectively than Norris, seizing every opportunity to overtake and ultimately claim victory.
Calmness under pressure is another of Piastri’s key strengths. Apart from a 10-second penalty for a safety car restart in Silverstone, he rarely makes errors during races and remains composed in intense situations.
At Spa, Piastri overtook Norris early in the race and managed his tyres effectively to cross the line in P1. Lap data showed minimal degradation across stints, with him finishing 3.4 seconds ahead of Norris and Verstappen.
In Hungary, although Norris claimed victory on a one-stop strategy, Piastri was only 0.6 seconds behind on a two-stop strategy, demonstrating his pace.
Tyre management
Lando Norris | Yi Xing Lim
Tyre management continues to be a key strength for Norris. In a year where the Briton has often found himself trailing behind his teammate, this is an area that has particularly given him an edge over Piastri on race days. While it’s true that mastering the art of tyremanagement typically comes with experience, Norris has consistently shown a natural advantage over his teammates in this aspect.
In 2025, because of his qualifying struggles, the Briton has showcased his strengths on Sundays. However, this season, the race where his tyre management truly shone: Hungary. To date, Norris’ victory at the 2025 Hungarian GP has become one of his best drives. Mainly, it was for making a one-stop strategy work.
Starting the race on the second row in P3, Norris and his side of the McLaren garage knew they needed to take a strategic gamble if he were to challenge Piastri or Leclerc for the win—and they did just that. In what appeared to be a clear one-stop race, Norris made his first stint on a set of mediums last until Lap 32. Subsequently, the Briton swapped his mediums for a set of hard tyres, which he nurtured until the end. With Piastri locked into a two-stop strategy, Norris was able to seize the opportunity and emerged victorious to claim his well-deserved win.
In a stint, McLaren and Norris have mastered the strategy of carefully managing their tyres early on, before charging through the field later.
Often the Briton’s lap times in the opening stages of a stint are few tenths slower than Piastri’s—giving the impression that he’s easily allowed the car in front of him to pull away. However, as a stint progresses, Norris consistently finds strong pace and starts delivering quick laps during its closing stages.
On multiple occasions, when McLaren has asked Norris to extend a stint, he has shown exactly how to respond. Unlike Piastri, Norris demonstrates a stronger ability to balance pushing and tyre preservation. On several occasions now, this skill has been a decisive factor in helping him fight for positions he might not have expected.
The 2025 Hungarian GP was truly a tyremanagement masterclass from the Briton, highlighting why he consistently maintains an edge on Piastri on Sundays.
Oscar Piastri | Rebecca Malitz
If you had asked many a year ago in which area Oscar Piastri needed to improve the most, the answer would have been easy: It’s tyre management.
In Piastri’s defence, he is still in the early stages of his F1 career, only having joined the grid at the start of the 2023 F1 season.In previous seasons, the Australian has shown great pace at times, matching or even surpassing his teammate.
However, Piastri’s pace often fell off as his tyres degraded at a much higher rate than those of his more experienced competitors, costing him better results. This was mainly due to Piastri not striking the right balance between blistering pace and keeping the tyres alive long enough to benefit from said pace.
Ahead of the 2024 F1 Spanish GP, the Australian even identified race and tyre management as the areas he needed to improve on the most.
The McLaren driver from Melbourne has since worked hard, and the first signs of improvement were already visible in the later stages of the 2024 F1 season. The Azerbaijan GP, where Piastri was engaged in a tight fight for the lead with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, is only one example. Piastri emerged as the victor as he was able to keep his tyres in the right window, which allowed him to drive off into the distance towards the closing stages.
However, the 24-year-old still lacked consistency in his tyre management skills. With the beginning of the 2025 F1 season, these inconsistencies appear to be a thing of the past. Piastri’s tyre management has been stellar all season, significantly improving his competitiveness on track.
The characteristics of the MCL 39 have certainly contributed to Piastri’s improvement, but you cannot attribute the steep learning curve solely to the car.
The fact that Piastri is not only fighting for the F1 Drivers’ Championship but leading it showcases how much he has improved as a driver, especially in an area that was once considered a weakness.
Is he now stronger than Norris? Probably not, but at the very least, he has closed the gap and is now on par with his more experienced teammate.
With tyre management no longer a weakness for Piastri, it will make it just that much harder for Norris to take back the lead in the 2025 F1 Drivers’ Championship.
Racecraft
Lando Norris | Aslıhan Alp
It is often depicted Oscar Piastri is the better driver when it comes to the McLaren duo’s racecraft comparison.
And if the duel is as tight as an intra-team fight could be, criticism can be a little bit harsher on both drivers. Though Piastri is currently one of the best drivers in terms of staying calm and moving strategically during a battle on track, Norris is definitely not the one to be underestimated.
The British McLaren driver has been showing a gradual and promising progress in his racecraft abilities ever since he stepped onto the Formula 1 track. His defensive racing, brave overtaking, and resilient tyre management have improved profoundly.
While his teammate Oscar Piastri mostly has the upper hand in the qualifying sessions on Saturdays, Norris has paved his way up to second place with his racecraft intelligence.
His best race in terms of racecraft was Hungary. Budapest was Norris’s worst start. However, this did not stop the Briton from racing until he reached the top. He committed to a risky one-stop strategy and defended his first-place position from his teammate Piastri, who had the fresher tyres, to the final meters of the chequered flag on ageing tyres.
Hungary was the exhibit A of Norris’s masterclass in patience, race, and tyre control. No errors and no tyre lock-ups gifted him a deserved victory, as well as having the courage and skills to execute a one-stop strategy without any errors.
One thing Norris has truly advanced is his patience, which helps a lot with his tyre management and stint lengths. On Sundays, Norris usually plays the long game and protects rubber early while also harvesting energy to use when others start to lose their pace.
Two clear demonstrations of his performance are from Silverstone and Budapest.
Through 14 rounds, the British McLaren driver owns 5 wins, 12 podiums, and 4 poles, plus a sprint triumph in Miami. His average grid position currently sits around P3.
Nevertheless, when he sees the chequered flag on Sundays, his average finishing position is better than P2, which translates as when Saturdays don’t hand him the key to the top, Sundays often do thanks to his racecraft.
But it is true that Norris still hasn’t honed his racecraft, as we saw in the Canadian Grand Prix. While fighting for fourth place with Piastri, Norris collided with his teammate, which cost him the only DNF of this season. Every fight for any place between the McLaren duo will become so much more valuable in the second half of the season.
Therefore, Norris should be extra careful while competing with his teammate since what he loses will be Piastri’s gain.
My view on Norris’s racecraft is that, though it is highly underestimated, it is better than Piastri’s, and it is also what will make the Briton a champion at the end of the season. Because the championship is not won on Saturdays, which Piastri tends to excel at.
The winner of the McLaren duo’s duel will be decided by their performance on Sunday, especially in the final ten laps of the race, where tyre life, battery management, decision-making and composure come into play. Thus, if McLaren’s civil war comes down to racecraft, I believe Lando Norris has the sharper sword and more experience in combat.
Oscar Piastri | Ryan McGahey
Having joined McLaren for the 2023 F1 season, Championship leader Oscar Piastri is now in his third full season. With 8 wins under his belt, 6 of which in the opening half of 2025, Piastri’s racecraft is hard to call into question.
The young Aussie has demonstrated his impressive skills on a Sunday since his rookie season. At his first home Grand Prix in Melbourne, Piastri achieved a P8 finish and his first points in the sport from a P16 grid slot. Later in the year, he improved from P17 to P7 during the Singapore Grand Prix.
An impressive performance against Max Verstappen saw him claim Sprint victory in Qatar from pole.
The 2024 season showed a dramatic improvement from McLaren which allowed Piastri to further showcase his skills. Wins in both the Hungarian & Azerbaijan Grands Prix were highlights of his 2024 campaign.
Despite early signs of promise from Piastri, the 2025 season thus far has silenced any questions regarding his pace. Although Piastri’s home Grand Prix provided a stumble with an error in wet conditions, the second event of the season set the tone for his 2025 campaign.
A dominant victory from Pole Position in China saw Piastri cross the line almost ten seconds ahead of his teammate Lando Norris as he battled a brake issue. Having maintained his position as the lights went on as Norris passed Russell behind, Piastri demonstrated his signature cool, calm and collected approach as he managed a comfortable gap to his teammate throughout the Grand Prix.
Piastri’s level headed and calculated approach has caught attention from the beginning, with the young Aussie seemingly never affected by pressure on track. His second win of the 2025 season once again demonstrated this.
Again starting from Pole, Piastri made yet another clean getaway and held his nerve as he built a gap out front. A mid-race safety car may have thrown a spanner in the works, but ever-calm Piastri comfortably pitted for new tyres and again made a clean restart to eventually take the chequered flag first.
Piastri’s calm approach was proven in higher stress situations during the Miami Grand Prix. While the Aussie had proved he could dominate from the front, Miami saw him showcase his overtaking skills. Bettering polesitter and 4-time champion Max Verstappen, Piastri crossed the line 1st of a McLaren 1-2.
The final 2 Grands Prix prior to the summer break also proved Piastri’s calm demeanor under pressure. A strong performance at Spa Francorchamps saw Piastri confidently pass teammate Norris in tricky conditions as the race got underway. He went on to maintain his lead despite a difficult second half as his teammate chased him down on more durable tyres.
The Hungarian Grand Prix on the other hand proved an almost perfectly opposite situation. As Piastri struggled to pass Leclerc early in the Grand Prix, he opted to attack in the closing stages with fresher rubber. While he ultimately failed to best his teammate, he again demonstrated his racing prowess as he consistently pressured Norris throughout the race.
Piastri has demonstrated time and time again that he possesses the raw pace to win the 2025 championship.
His calm, calculated racecraft however, may well prove the deciding factor going into the latter half of the season, with just a 9 point lead of his teammate.
