How close is the 2025 championship?

Oscar Piastri leads McLaren teammate Lando Norris by nine points after 14 rounds.

Put another way, Piastri has outscored Norris by an average of just 0.6 points per weekend.

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Momentum has flowed subtly between them all year. Piastri has been more consistent, but Norris has enjoyed some bigger highs, many of which were backloaded into the northern summer.

In a battle this tight, any even minor points swing could be the turning point of the championship.

These are the five moments of the first part of the campaign that could prove to be one of those crucial pivots.

AUSTRALIA: NORRIS GETS PERFECT START AFTER PIASTRI SPIN

Pre-season testing had confirmed McLaren would be the team to beat in 2025, and despite both Norris and Piastri making mistakes with their first Q3 laps in Melbourne, both duly delivered to lock out the front row, Briton ahead of Australian, for the perfect start to the weekend for the reigning constructors championship.

For local fans it was even more significant. It wasn’t just that Piastri was starting the season on the front foot; the Melburnian had arguably the best chance of any local driver of ending the Australian Grand Prix curse by standing on the podium.

Piastri fell to third behind Max Verstappen in wet conditions, but by lap 17 he was back into second and closing rapidly on Norris, who had led from pole.

McLaren, exercising what has to be described as extreme caution, called off the fight temporarily with the threat of looming rain and backmarkers ahead.

And the rain did arrive — suddenly and severely.

Norris and Piastri both slithered off the road at turn 13 in almost identical incidents, but whereas the Briton regained composure in time to make the final corner, Piastri slipped across the track and beached himself in the grass.

He resumed the race 15th, from where a fast-finishing ninth was the best he could recover.

The Australian Grand Prix home curse continued, and this time with significant potency.

It wasn’t just that a big result was so suddenly and dramatically denied Piastri and his home fans; it’s that the third-year McLaren driver shipped a considerably 23 points to Norris in a single race.

It amounted to what looked like a considerable title blow at the very first race to give Norris an immediate advantage in a championship race that even at that early stage seemed likely to be fought between the McLaren teammates.

But 23 points, it would turn out, would be the largest margin between the two drivers to the mid-season break.

Championship picture

Norris: 25 points (1 win)

Piastri: 2 points (0 wins)

Margin: Norris ahead by 23 points

Oscar Piastri started the season on the back foot. (Picture: Mark Stewart)Source: News Corp Australia

SAUDI ARABIA: PIASTRI TAKE THE LEAD WITH MAJOR MOMENTUM

Piastri faced a steep mountain after Australia, but he climbed it rapidly. Victory in China earnt him a 13-point swing thanks to the sprint, and he crushed the field in Bahrain with the biggest winning margin of the season to date to put himself within striking distance of his teammate.

He capitalised in Saudi Arabia, where he beat pole-getter Verstappen off the line and forced the Dutchman to cut the track, earning a penalty that would decide the race in the McLaren driver’s favour.

More illustrative of the season, however, was Norris’s performance.

After qualifying an error-prone sixth in Bahrain, he crashed out of Q3 in Saudi Arabia, leaving him 10th on the grid.

That was too far back to get onto the podium. Fourth was the best he could do, shipping another 13 points to Piastri — the equal biggest swing in the Australian’s favour so far this season — and losing the championship lead.

It amounted to a 33-point turnaround in just four weekends and a powerful statement from Piastri.

In charge of the title table for the first time in his career, his championship bona fides were becoming indisputable.

But by now we were also learning that Norris had a clear and significant weakness threatening to derail his campaign.

Qualifying had been a strength for him in 2024, but he was struggling to consistently get the most from the 2025 McLaren over a single lap.

The team had talked about some driveability trade-offs that had come with improving the overall package for this season, and a numbness from the front axle — a lack of feedback when it was near its grip limit — was hurting Norris and his driving style.

Jeddah was the third time from five grands prix he’d been outqualified, but on all three occasions he was being beaten by more than one grid place. In the two Middle Eastern rounds his deficits were five and eight places.

Improving his qualifying form and giving himself less work to do on Sundays, when he regularly looked competitive, would be defining of his championship challenge.

Championship picture

Norris: 89 points (1 win)

Piastri: 99 points (3 wins)

Margin: Piastri ahead by 10 points

Oscar Piastri took the title lead in Saudi Arabia. (Photo by Mark Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)Source: Getty Images

MONACO: NORRIS’S TITLE-CALIBRE PERFORMANCE

There is no greater qualifying challenge in Formula 1 than the streets of Monte Carlo. Having been shaded by Piastri in Monaco in 2024, Norris was tipped to suffer another defeat to his teammate at the sport’s highest profile race.

Instead he turned the tables.

The perennial qualifying fumbler was flawless around those punishing streets while Piastri was uncharacteristically scruffy.

Norris’s intrateam advantage of 0.175 seconds was comfortably his biggest up to that point, and though it was hardly an obliteration, it was big enough for Charles Leclerc to slot between them, demoting Piastri to third.

With overtaking as difficult as ever, it condemned Piastri to the last podium position, ensuring a 10-point swing against him, leaving him with a wafer-thin three-point lead.

It answered some important questions about the championship fight.

Some had been tempted to write Norris’s qualifying mistakes down to pressure, but he didn’t crack in the most pressurised qualifying hour of the year.

Some also wondered whether Norris had simply been found out by a teammate who had innately greater qualifying speed. While one race can never definitively answer that question, Monaco remains the gold standard one-lap test, and he passed.

It was therefore a significant confidence boost for Norris, who had been publicly self-critical and also open about the work he had been undertaking behind the scenes to try to gel better with his car.

Quite aside from the near levelling of the championship tally, it was a crucial reset of expectations and momentum as Norris and Piastri eyed the thick of the European campaign.

More twists, however, were in store.

Championship picture

Norris: 158 points (2 wins)

Piastri: 161 points (4 wins)

Margin: Piastri ahead by 3 points

Victory in Monaco was Lando Norris at his best. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images

CANADA: NORRIS CRASH GIVES PIASTRI HIS BIGGEST LEAD

Despite the tight title fight between teammates, there’s been only one flashpoint to speak of, and even then it lacked the expected tension.

Norris rear-ending Piastri in the closing laps of the Canadian Grand Prix was the crash they had to have, at least according to the team.

It was clumsy racecraft from the Briton, who at that moment wasn’t even really putting on a move. The fact it was so clearly his error meant any possible angst was immediately defused, with Norris immediately owning up to the mistake.

Though the team took no collateral damage, Norris’s championship position took a considerable hit. Piastri emerged from Montreal with a 22-point advantage, his biggest lead of the season.

But actually Norris was lucky.

Montreal was McLaren’s weakest track of the season. It’s the only race so far that hasn’t featured at least one of its drivers on the front row or one of its drivers on the podium.

With Piastri finishing fourth — his average finishing position for the season is 2.43 — the damage was limited to just 12 points. There have been bigger swings between the teammates at three other races despite Canada being the only DNF for either of them.

It means this will be an interesting outcome to reflect on at the end of the season if the title remains so close.

But there was a further important element to this weekend.

McLaren brought new suspension geometry to the car targeting the front-axle numbness that had been hamstringing Norris in qualifying.

It didn’t do him much good that weekend, with two Q3 mistakes leaving him seventh on the grid, but his qualifying record since then has been unimpeachable.

His average qualifying deficit to Piastri up to Canada was 0.133 seconds.

In the four rounds afterwards he’s turned the tables to deliver a 0.176-second advantage.

That margin comes down to 0.04 seconds if you exclude Austria, where Piastri’s last lap was cancelled by yellow flags.

Maybe those 12 points in Montreal will decide the title for Piastri. Maybe McLaren’s relative lack of competitiveness that weekend will help Norris.

Or perhaps that upgrade, its gains unseen at the time but evident since, will have a hand in the outcome.

Championship picture

Norris: 176 points (2 wins)

Piastri: 198 points (5 wins)

Margin: Piastri ahead by 22 points

Lando Norris’s Canada crash could be championship-defining. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press via AP)Source: AP

HUNGARY: PIASTRI LOSES OUT IN FRUSTRATING FINAL RUN

It’s been mostly one-way traffic in Norris’s favour since Canada, at least as far as the points are concerned.

Norris has outscored Piastri in three of the four rounds, shrinking the deficit by 13 points.

The Hungarian Grand Prix, closing the first part of the season, set an interesting tone for the mid-season break.

Piastri had qualified ahead but was shaded by a superb Charles Leclerc on pole. Getting ahead of the Ferrari defined the first two stints of his race.

Norris, on the other hand, qualified third and had a poor start, dropping to fifth and rapidly losing touch with the leaders.

He gambled on an unlikely one-stop strategy to salvage a podium position. It ended up winning him the race.

McLaren — and most other teams — hadn’t considered the power of the one-stop strategy, and by the time it was clear that it was the more effective route to the flag, it was too late for Piastri to convert.

He chased down his teammate and tried a pair of big lunges at the first corner, one of which came perilously close to tagging the sister car.

Norris, however, had it all under control to win the race by 0.7 seconds.

This race is crucial to the title story for several reasons.

The first is that it told the tale of the final month of racing: Norris capitalising on circumstances to close his championship deficit.

That isn’t a criticism. Previously he hadn’t been in the ballpark to benefit from these sorts of 50-50 situations. He’s now fast enough to earn some luck that was automatically falling Piastri’s way earlier in the year.

The second is that McLaren is allowing its drivers and their respective engineers to battle each other with different strategies. There were major differences in Hungary but also smaller differences at the previous race in Belgium, where Norris was allowed to use the hard tyre to pressure Piastri on the mediums.

This will be a major factor in their battle going forward, particularly as the team finds itself in an increasingly dominant position ahead of the field.

The third is that Norris is back in the game in terms of points.

There’s a parallel universe in which Piastri isn’t penalised in Silverstone and gets pole in Budapest and wins both races, propelling him to a 37-point lead at the mid-season break.

We’d be having totally different conversations about the championship picture in that case.

But if you believe in scoreboard pressure, Norris now wields some. He’s breathing down the neck of his teammate with 10 rounds to go.

Championship picture

Norris: 275 points (5 wins)

Piastri: 284 points (6 wins)

Margin: Piastri ahead by 9 points

Oscar Piastri was beaten to victory by Lando Norris in Hungary. (Photo by Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP)Source: AFP

WHAT’S NEXT?

But scoreboard pressure goes both ways.

Norris has closed fast on Piastri’s lead, but Piastri is still the leader. He’s in only his third Formula 1 campaign in a year Norris was widely tipped during the pre-season to be the man to beat.

You’d rather be in his position than trailing in Norris’s car.

Momentum also doesn’t have to sit with only one driver.

While Norris will have taken great confidence from victories in Austria and Great Britain and from his close win in Hungary, they haven’t come about because Piastri has been slow.

Piastri was clearly a step behind in qualifying in Austria, but he was arguably faster in the race.

He was dominating in the wet in Silverstone before his safety car penalty.

In Hungary he was the better qualifier, got the better start and was well ahead in the first half of the race only to be usurped by a strategy he wasn’t prompted to take.

Norris is clearly in good form. He hasn’t made a qualifying mistake since Canada and has been the more prolific scorer.

But Piastri has been faster and better in the races.

What these five key moments have done is deliver us the dream scenario: two closely matched drivers with different strengths and weaknesses in equal machinery competing for the championship.

With 10 rounds remaining, it’s all to play for, and the title is either driver’s to win.