Lando Norris now sits 34 points behind Oscar Piastri in the 2025 Formula 1 title battle after a shock retirement from the Dutch Grand Prix.
It is a massive swing in advantage for Piastri, who now enters the second half of the season with the advantage over Norris, who will need to win at least three races to close the gap.
Piastri has now exceeded 300 points after his win at Zandvoort, with the Australian highlighting how the Safety Car restarts were tricky as he had Norris and Max Verstappen behind him applying pressure.
Position Drivers’ Championship PointsPts 1 309 2 275 3 205 4 184 5 151
It represents another significant swing in the title battle between the pair after Norris crashed out of Canada. But while a crash or on-track incident was bound to impact the points gap, Alex Brundle admitted he did not have one prediction in mind when speaking on the Fast and Curious podcast.
Alex Brundle did not think McLaren power unit failure would be on 2025 ‘bingo card’
F1 power unit reliability has improved over the years, with there being more instances of all cars finishing a race. There are still problems, as Mercedes and their customers have suffered with reliability problems this year.
Although McLaren appeared to be immune to these issues, Norris was forced to retire from the race after a suspected power unit-related problem while running in second place, something Brundle did not think would be possible in 2025.
“I’ve been harping on, on air and on podcasts all year, about one race where one of those McLaren duo, that are clearly the class of the field now,” said Brundle.
“There was going to be a race at some point this year, I honestly believed they were going to have a crash with someone like a Charles Leclerc or someone like a Max Verstappen, a wheel-to-wheel thing, but where they didn’t finish.
“What I didn’t have on my bingo card in a 2025 Formula 1 car was a power unit failure. It was absolutely nowhere near that in terms of a prediction. It’s wild in one of the most, if not the most reliable eras of F1 car ever, that that could easily be the deciding factor of this championship.”
Photo by Clive Rose/Getty ImagesLando Norris retirement mimics Lewis Hamilton engine failure in 2016
It was an unfortunate end to the race for Norris and mimics the defining moments of a season for previous drivers, including Lewis Hamilton.
Hamilton was in a title battle with Nico Rosberg during the 2016 season, and an engine failure effectively ruled him out of contention at the end of the season.
Despite him going on to win the last four races, Hamilton finished five points adrift of Rosberg.
Jolyon Palmer thought Norris was the luckier driver than Piastri before the summer break, but that appears to have changed now.