Championship defeat for Piastri and Norris would now be a huge missed opportunity

With one-quarter of the season left, the championship situation is clear. One of the two McLaren drivers should win the title, but both could still fumble their chance and open the door for to Max Verstappen.

That threat should concentrate minds at McLaren now the constructors’ championship fight has been settled. There is an obvious risk their drivers will continue to take points from the other. The greater danger is the pair could collide, leave a weekend point-less and propel Verstappen from outsider to contender.

But McLaren isn’t ready to call off the fight between its drivers. It could hardly justify it at a time when the pair are so close the points lead could swap between them at the next round.

Oscar Piastri enjoyed a clear upper hand at the beginning of the year, winning four of the first six grands prix. But Lando Norris regained the initiative particularly after McLaren introduced a new its front suspension layout.

While Piastri retains the championship lead he has held since the fifth round back in April, Norris has whittled it down. It now stands at 22 points – 18 of which slipped through Norris’s fingers when his car broke down at Zandvoort.

Norris has beaten Piastri home four times in the last five races. But it would be too simplistic to say Norris has the ‘momentum’ at this point. The more accurate view is the two drivers are an extremely close match and each interaction between them can have a significant impact on the overall picture.

That was clear in the contentious first-lap incident between the pair in Singapore. Norris lunged up the inside of Piastri, tagged Verstappen’s Red Bull and then understeered into the sister MCL39.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and

Piastri was understandably unimpressed by Norris’s method of overtaking him. He wisely kept his counsel once he got out of the car and avoided overshadowing McLaren’s constructors’ championship celebrations but no doubt there have been conversations about this behind closed doors at the McLaren Technology Centre.

Both drivers have taken risks trying to overtake the other so far this year. But Piastri could justifiably claim to have exercised slightly more restraint. The team warned him over the radio after he locked up while attacking his team mate at the Hungaroring and Red Bull Ring. But Singapore wasn’t the first time Norris initiated contact with his team mate: he did so at Montreal too, ending his race.

Norris’s bold first-lap move in Singapore had another noteworthy consequence: he has now finished ahead of Piastri more often than not this year. Over the 21 races so far (18 grands prix plus three sprint races) Norris has been the first McLaren driver home 11 times to Piastri’s 10.

That near-even split between the pair also illustrates how many points they have lost by fighting each other. As it stands, Verstappen is creeping closer on 273 points, Norris has 314 and Piastri leads on 336.

But if either McLaren driver had taken the team’s best result at every race this year they could be standing on 409 points right now. With that kind of tally, McLaren would be virtually guaranteed to see one of their drivers win the title this year.

The same reasoning doesn’t apply at Red Bull, of course: Verstappen has been their highest-scoring driver in all 21 races so far this year.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and

McLaren have won the constructors’ championship by such a dominant margin that the drivers’ title fight should be a forgone conclusion. But that is not the case.

They put a lock on the title with six rounds still remaining. Had they not stumbled as badly as they did in Baku they likely would have clinched the crown one round earlier. (That’s certainly what British broadcaster Channel 4 counted on, as they broadcast their Azerbaijan Grand Prix coverage from the McLaren Technology Centre, only for Piastri to bin his car on the first lap and Norris to limp home seventh).

Because of that, McLaren were not able to achieve the earliest constructors’ championship win since their 1988 triumph, when they took the title with 31% of the season left to run. Even so, McLaren still achieved one of the earliest title wins for any team in F1 history.

That should leave no one in any doubt that the MCL39 has been, on balance, the class of the field so far this year. McLaren’s lead is already over 300 points and could be higher by the end of the year. It would therefore reflect badly on Piastri and Norris if neither of them wins the drivers’ championship.

Formula 1

• Horner rumours are an unhelpful distraction for Ferrari, says Hamilton
• Verstappen could win title with less competitive car ‘as we saw in 2021’ – Alonso
• FIA revises rules to help manufacturers who fall “significantly behind” in 2026
• Heat hazard declared for second F1 event in a row at United States GP
• Alpine becomes sixth F1 team to change livery for United States Grand Prix

Browse all Formula 1 articles