Oscar Piastri out to break his score slump in Brazil, Lando Norris to flex his status as championship leader, Max Verstappen needs luck to close his title gap, weather forecast, championship battle

The Sao Paulo Grand Prix might be the fourth-last round on the schedule, but it always has the atmosphere of a title decider.

Interlagos has a habit of redirecting the trajectory of a championship. It might not be decisive, but it’s always highly influential.

That’s especially true when there’s extra points up for grabs in the sprint.

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Every score is crucial for title leader Lando Norris and rival Oscar Piastri, who are separated by only one point with four rounds remaining.

But it’s Max Verstappen, clinging on at 36 points down, who has best illustrated the power of a sprint format.

It was only two rounds ago, in Austin, where the Dutchman executed a perfect weekend to take 23 points out of his championship deficit in just 24 hours, instantly reinserting him into the title battle as a genuine threat.

If he were to do the same again this weekend, he would leave Interlagos with a deficit of just 13 points and the tag as championship favourite.

Norris or Piastri, on the other hand, would take a big step towards claiming the championship for themselves if either walked away having put more than 20 points on the other.

With weather in the air — as it always is in Interlagos — the jeopardy and the stakes couldn’t he higher at a weekend that could prove pivotal to the title outcome.

PIT TALK PODCAST: Oscar Piastri will be looking to bounce back and retake the title lead at this weekend’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix, but if the online conspiracies are to be believed, the Australian won’t have a chance. What’s true and what’s false in Piastri’s drop from title leader to championship chaser?

CAN PIASTRI RETAKE THE TITLE LEAD?

Piastri has been deposed from his 189-day reign atop the championship standings, with Norris taking back top spot of the first time in 15 rounds at the previous race in Mexico City.

After 20 rounds of racing, just a single point separates the two teammates and title favourites in what has effectively become a four-round showdown.

But they don’t quite start from scratch.

Having had a firm hand at the tiller before the mid-season break and having taken a 34-point lead after the Dutch Grand Prix, Piastri’s momentum has almost totally left him, culminating in his dire pair of fifth-place finishes in the United States and Mexico.

His challenge, then, isn’t simply to retake the title lead. To win the championship, he’ll have to rediscover the early form of which we’ve seen only glimpses since the mid-season break — in the Netherlands particularly and to a lesser extent in Italy and Singapore.

The Australian was typically nonplussed in the Interlagos paddock, declaring his North American struggles as an explainable blip rather than a trend.

“I think Austin and Mexico are a bit different to quite a lot of other circuits we’ve been to,” he said, per Autosport.

“Even just when you look at the tyre usage on both of those weekends … to have the softest tyres being the tyres to be on in qualifying and the race is not that usual, and that has been a big difference from earlier in the season.

“In some circuits maybe [there’s] a corner or two where you need to adapt to things like that and drive a bit differently, but the last couple of weekends you’ve needed to drive differently all the time in a way that I’ve not had to for the whole year.

“I’ve just been trying to understand more of what I need to shift to and how that feels has been the biggest learning curve with that.”

Those softer tyres allied to the low-grip surface meant Piastri’s apparent weakness harnessing a sliding car would lead to more overheating, which would lead to less grip, which would lead to more sliding and so on.

Sao Paulo sees the sport return to a circuit with more typical grip levels, and Pirelli has brought harder tyres than last season, which should see conditions swing back towards Piastri.

Last year he was fractionally quicker than Norris in dry conditions, taking sprint pole and controlling the short race until handing victory to his teammate after a team order.

Norris had his measure in torrentially wet qualifying, though neither driver gave a good account of themselves in the wet grand prix.

If he really is on top of his problems, history suggests he should have at least an even chance of taking back the championship lead this weekend — the first step towards rebuilding his advantage in the fight for his maiden title.

“I know that I’ve still got what it takes to win the championship,” he said. “There have been some bumps along the road, but there have been bumps on the road for everyone this year at different points.

“I’m confident that I’ve learnt a lot of helpful things from the last couple of weekends in particular, and I’m confident as well that I can still perform at some of the heights of the success we’ve had this year.

“There are still a lot of laps to go this year, and I’m very confident I can still win.”

Piastri drops lead after Norris victory | 07:06

HAS NORRIS FOUND ANOTHER LEVEL?

Piastri’s struggles have been only half the equation of the shifting positions at the top of the title table. Norris has clearly found another level in the second half of the campaign.

The Englishman can argue he’s been the better performing McLaren driver at a minimum of four of the six weekends since the mid-season break — by a significant margin in Azerbaijan, the United States and Mexico and with a finer advantage in Italy.

He was outqualified by Piastri in Singapore, but his ambitious but clumsy move to take third place on the first lap debatably had him leaving the weekend as the better overall performer.

Only at the Dutch Grand Prix did the Australian have an indisputable upper hand, where Piastri had Norris beaten before the Briton retired with engine problems.

Norris has outscored Piastri by 35 points since that weekend, an average of seven points per round, to storm to top spot.

On the way he’s finished on the podium at four of the last five rounds — Piastri has taken home just one podium trophy in that time — and snapped long pole position and victory droughts.

It’s this run, rather than the title lead itself, that has Norris feeling optimistic that the game has changed — optimistic that he can control his own title destiny.

“Mentality has improved, approach has improved, preparation has improved,” Norris said, per the BBC.

“But also consistency. It’s not like I’ve won the last six or seven races, but I’ve been consistently out there and consistently scoring points.

“That’s actually the thing that’s given me the biggest boost over the last few weeks.

“All of that has improved because of doing more work and working harder and spending more time trying to understand things rather than [thinking], ‘I’ve got nothing to lose now, I’ll just go for it’.

“I’d put it more down to just having worked hard and having a very good team around me — 99 per cent of it is down to that; 1 per cent is a mix of various different things.”

But Norris is being cautious not to let his status as championship leader — slender though the margin is — affect the way he’s approaching the weekend.

“I don’t think in terms of races and achieving the actual dream of being a champion,” he said. “I still at the minute don’t feel any difference.

“I think nothing’s completed, nothing’s done. There’s still, what, over 120 points [116 points] or something available, so it doesn’t mean anything still for the time being.

“It’s a nice thought, again, to look on and think about, but otherwise it’s nice to be there, but to win next weekend and win the final race, that’s still my goal.”

‘Obvious’ Oscar admits to driving change | 02:42

CAN VERSTAPPEN RECAPTURE HIS 2024 BRAZIL MAGIC?

Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen are throwing so much at the 2025 title chase that even Jos Verstappen, Max’s father, has felt a need to get involved.

In an interview in Dutch paper De Telegraaf, the former F1 driver openly asked whether McLaren was deliberately sabotaging Piastri’s title hopes and said, if not, then questions must be asked about whether Piastri had the psychology to win the championship.

Verstappen Sr has never needed an excuse to speak his mind, but it’s hard to see this as anything other than a targeted strike aimed at destabilising McLaren.

Psychological warfare is all part of a championship battle.

Then again, Verstappen simply being in the fight is probably psychologically damaging enough.

If Norris’s form, having clawed back 35 points in five weekends, has him with the title momentum, how do we describe Verstappen closing his deficit by 68 points in the same time?

Verstappen himself has a description: remarkable.

“For me there’s no pressure,” he said, per Autosport. “Even if I don’t win it, I still know that I drove a really good season. I think it will be very tough, so you just need to be realistic in the chances that we had throughout the season.

“To still be talking about being in this fight I think is already remarkable in the first place, and for sure it has to do with the turnaround of the team, they never gave up, and that’s a strength of the team. I think it’s very impressive.”

Verstappen of course has wielded that car to perfection since its major upgrade in Italy. Had it not been for the late safety car in Mexico, he likely would’ve finished first or second at every race.

The 36-point margin, though, is still considerable, and his title destiny still isn’t entirely in his own hands — he would need Norris and Piastri to take turns finishing second while he wins all remaining races to close the gap.

“We probably need a little bit of luck on one round to create a bigger offset, but we’re going to give it all,” he admitted.

You wouldn’t bet against Interlagos being that round.

The Brazilian circuit has form throwing title curve balls. The bowl layout, the overtaking zones, the changeable weather, the heady atmosphere — there’s something special about this circuit and this event.

Verstappen’s champion drive last year, recovering from 17th on the grid to take a dominant victory and all but clinch the title, is just one example.

The rain that gave him his lowest starting position of the year also generated the conditions in which he could excel, obliterating the field and in particular the McLaren drivers, whose dry-weather advantage dissolved to nothing in the deluge.

It’s the sort of drive — and the sort of twist in fortune — that Verstappen needs in 2025 to fully grasp his title chance.

The threat of him repeating last year’s heroics would be more unsettling for McLaren than any interview his father could give.

WILL THE WEATHER INTERVENE?

Yes.

That’s the short answer. Rain is practically always in the air when Formula 1 visits Sao Paulo in November. Even if it doesn’t hit for the grand prix, it’s almost inevitable for at least one session.

That’s particularly important when the event is run as a sprint, which doubles the chance that a grid-setting or points-paying session is run in the wet.

At the time of writing, the forecast suggests a persistent and high chance of rain throughout Saturday, with a lower risk of bad weather on Friday and Sunday.

That would suggest that the sprint race and grand prix qualifying could be run in wet conditions.

That could mean unexpected points winners and a jumbled grid.

It’s also set to be much cooler on Sunday, which will alter the form guide and likely benefit Red Bull Racing by neutering McLaren’s big hot-weather strength.

Forecasting weather for Interlagos has always seemed notoriously difficult, and the geography of the place — despite the small footprint of the twisty layout — means some parts of the circuit can be drenched while others remain dry, making judgement calls tricky.

Timing is everything.

The propensity for at least one driver to get things wrong means there’s also value in holding your nerve as you read conditions.

Last year Verstappen’s quest for victory was helped by not immediately responding to a virtual safety car as conditions deteriorated.

Red Bull Racing’s prudence was rewarded when Franco Colapinto smashed his car shortly afterwards, triggering a red flag and giving Verstappen a free pit stop, giving him a strategic advantage over those who had rushed to pit lane at the first sign of trouble.

With more points on the line this weekend than usual, whoever can master the mixed conditions could walk away from Interlagos with a swag of points. That could mean a handy title lead for the McLaren drivers or a greatly reduced deficit for Verstappen.

It’s a weekend that always manages to mix deep jeopardy and high stakes, and the 2025 Sao Paulo Grand Prix will be no exception.