With the 2025 F1 season in its final stretch, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff gave his insights on what has become a three-way championship battle between McLaren teammates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s four-time defending champion Max Verstappen.
Contentious F1 championship fights are nothing new for Wolff, whose team won eight straight constructors’ titles and seven straight drivers’ championships from 2014-2021. This includes two of the most controversial title fights of the last 20 years: Nico Rosberg’s triumph over teammate Lewis Hamilton in 2016, and the 2021 battle between Hamilton and Verstappen.
McLaren teammates handling the title chase “very well”
Wolff has been impressed by the fair play between Norris and Piastri throughout the season, as McLaren had declined to impose team orders earlier in the season.
“I think how they handle it is very well. It’s very good letting them race. I don’t see a situation where they’re taking each other out.[…] I think just let them race, [and] make no contact.”
Unfortunately this has not always been the case this season. Norris and Piastri tangled late at the Canadian GP and at the start of the United States GP sprint race.
Beyond that, it has been a clean fight between the teammates. Norris has gained the upper hand with back-to-back wins while Piastri has not finished on the podium since Monza.
With Verstappen rising and Piastri falling, Norris “has held the nerves”
Wolff observed that “as a team principal, as a team boss here, you just need to hold a grip on it and not allow any shots from outside.” This has been the case for the constructors’ title, which McLaren handily locked up with six races to spare back.
The only external threat has been Verstappen, who has come on late with seven straight podiums. At this point, however, Wolff suggests the title is Lando’s to lose. “The gap that Lando has now is very, very solid, but he can’t afford a DNF either, because then it swings in the other direction.[…] But he was impressive in the last few races, how he held the nerves and how he scored the points.”
