With three wins in the last four races before the summer break, Lando Norris is closing in on Oscar Piastri in the battle for the 2025 F1 world championship.
As the title battle heats up, F1 Oversteer spoke exclusively to commentator Alex Jacques during the mid-season break about Norris’s resurgence.
It was looking like Piastri would run into the mid-season with a healthy points advantage over Norris, after the pair collided in the closing stages of the Canadian Grand Prix.
Norris quickly put things to one side, and that enabled him to come back with a dominant victory at the following race in Spielberg. You could argue that Norris was lucky in Silverstone because of a Safety Car infringement from Piastri, but in Hungary, he delivered a strategic masterclass.
The Briton has answered a few important questions that were being asked of him following a patchy start to the year, but Jacques believes this mimics the same ability he had during the 2018 title battle with George Russell in the feeder series Formula 2.
Photo by Song Haiyuan/MB Media/Getty ImagesAlex Jacques thinks Lando Norris has ‘undervalued’ trait of staying in contention
F2 is where drivers learn their last bit of race craft before making it to F1, often displaying some of the traits that make them who they are when they have the attention of the world’s media.
Norris displayed one characteristic that made him stand out, according to Jacques: “Weirdly, there’s a very key trait of Lando Norris that he’s shown again this year in his first full season as a title protagonist.
“In Formula 2, he just couldn’t really get the Pirelli tyre to work with that car. So he spent the entire season just trying to hang in the battle. And I know it was a massive source of stress, in that George Russell had an in-season test, which they all attend.
“Russell was able to get an understanding in that in-season test of how to make the Pirelli rubber work, that Norris never really with his team, got on top of, so they were constantly having to almost drive around the problem.
“And it’s been very similar this year. Lando can’t access his ferocious speed as consistently as Oscar Piastri can with this car. That’s the evidence that we’ve got across the first 14 rounds.
“Very similar in Formula 2. He won early, in his third race, so he did a couple of races at the back end of the year, and then he joined in 2018, won in Bahrain, and then was expected to rattle off the victories.
“But it just had to turn into a campaign of consistency and ultimately finished runner-up. It was his ability to hang in there that I think I’ve seen again this year.
“It’s an undervalued trait of a driver to be able to stay in contention when it’s not working perfectly. Just the question then becomes, can you make the breakthrough that perhaps he couldn’t in F2? He was only in there for a single full season, and then obviously McLaren wanted him in that car as quickly as possible, and the results since have backed that up.
“I hadn’t really thought about that aspect of his driving since that year. The way that he found a way to stay in contention, even though things were not perfect in terms of performance. We’ve seen that again this year.”
How many points have Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri lost at the halfway point?
Norris has often been criticised for his errors on track, which have cost him critical points when it matters in on-track skirmishes. During the 2024 battle with Max Verstappen for the title, Norris made too many unforced errors that put him behind in the points table.
McLaren has the luxury of being able to run away with the title this year, and the battle between Norris and Piastri has seen its fair share of ups and downs.
RaceNorrisPiastriAustralia1st – 25 points (none lost)9th – 2 points (16 – 23 points lost)Japan2nd – 18 points (7 points lost)3rd – 15 points (12 – 10 points lost)Saudi Arabia4th – 12 points (6 – 13 points lost) 1st – 25 points (none lost)Emilia Romagna2nd – 18 points (7 points lost)3rd – 15 points (12 – 10 points lost)Monaco1st – 25 points (none lost)3rd – 15 points (12 – 10 points lost)Canada18th – 0 points (18 – 25 points lost)4th – 12 points (6 – 13 points lost)Points lost versus potential points gained (none 1st or 2nd finishes)
Piastri notably missed out on crucial points in the season opener when he spun off the track in the wet conditions. Although he recovered to ninth after a sensational move on Lewis Hamilton, it cost him well over 15 points.
An error in qualifying at Japan enabled Verstappen to take pole, with Piastri slipping to third. Then in Saudi Arabia the tables would turn for Norris, who crashed out and could only finish fourth in the race.
Piastri forfeited more points in Imola when he let Verstappen pull off a stunning move at Tamburello, but the most points lost were arguably Canada for Norris. Since then, it’s been 1-2 all the way for the McLaren duo, but it will come down to who makes the fewest mistakes.