{"id":160194,"date":"2025-09-22T03:52:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T03:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/160194\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T03:52:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T03:52:12","slug":"mclaren-oscar-piastri-lando-norris-world-championship-title-fight-azerbaijan-grand-prix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/160194\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren, Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris, world championship title fight, Azerbaijan Grand Prix"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Oscar Piastri<\/a>‘s retirement in Azerbaijan<\/a> gave McLaren<\/a> teammate Lando Norris<\/a> a golden opportunity to gain ground in their championship battle, the Briton could only manage a seventh-place finish, narrowing the gap by just six points.<\/p>\n

With seven rounds remaining, Piastri leads the drivers’ championship and is on course for his first world title with a 25-point advantage over Norris.<\/p>\n

Adding to the drama, Piastri’s lap-one crash<\/a> marked his first retirement since the 2023 United States Grand Prix. The incident ended the Australian’s impressive streak of 44 consecutive race finishes and 34 consecutive races in the points.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Ciraldo’s defiant call as ‘nightmare’ half ends season<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Piastri rues ‘silly mistakes’ after ‘nightmare’ crash<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Aussie ends worlds with a ‘saturated notebook’, and a gold medal<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Marshals<\/p>\n

Marshals clear Oscar Piastri’s car from the track as his McLaren teammate and championship rival, Lando Norris, drives by during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.\u00a0Rudy Carezzevoli via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Norris has also recorded two DNF results this season.<\/p>\n

During a marathon qualifying, Norris failed to take full advantage of Piastri’s earlier crash<\/a>, managing only the seventh-fastest time after clipping the wall on his final flying lap.<\/p>\n

His race was then hampered by a slow pit stop and heavy traffic, leaving him stuck behind Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda and Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson despite a long stint on his medium tyres.<\/p>\n

A slow pit stop also hurt Norris’ race at the Italian Grand Prix earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Speaking afterwards, Norris pushed back against the idea that he failed to seize big moments across the weekend.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know why everybody says that [it was an opportunity missed],” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Lando<\/p>\n

Lando Norris fields questions from reporters in the media pen following the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.\u00a0Jayce Illman via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“I did the best I could yesterday and the best I could today.<\/p>\n

“Of course, today I wanted more. So it was not a good result. But I couldn’t do anything more today.<\/p>\n

“It was lost yesterday because of going out a bit early. Not doing the best lap.<\/p>\n

“Maybe you could’ve gained a couple of positions, but I don’t think it really changes anything today.<\/p>\n

“It’s just impossible to overtake.”<\/p>\n

Norris also acknowledged that McLaren’s competitive advantage has been eroded by rival teams, particularly Red Bull.<\/p>\n

“I think people have caught [us],” he said.<\/p>\n

“Red Bull brought upgrades last weekend. Their race pace is strong.<\/p>\n

“It’s hard to be perfect in the world of Formula 1. I’m trying to work on things, and can I learn some things better? Yeah.”<\/p>\n

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella defended Norris’s performance in Baku, believing that the responsibility for not scoring more points lay with the team, not the driver in this instance.<\/p>\n

“I think Lando had a strong race. He raced to the limit of the potential that was available in the car,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I think no other driver in Lando’s car could have scored more.<\/p>\n

“We were hoping to have a car that was in condition to overtake, but the reality is that the car wasn’t fast enough to stay close to the car ahead out of the last corner, to then be able to overtake down the straight. This means that Lando spent the entire race in traffic, despite feeling that the car had more to offer.<\/p>\n

“If anything, the responsibility to try and extract more points may lay more on the team’s side, because with a fast pitstop we could have given Lando the opportunity perhaps to attack Lawson.”<\/p>\n

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix presented McLaren with its first chance to clinch the constructors’ championship.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri watched the rest of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix from the sidelines after crashing out on the opening lap.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

However, the combination of Piastri’s crash and Norris’ struggles meant the team was unable to achieve the points target against Ferrari \u2014 scoring its lowest points haul since the 2023 Las Vegas GP.<\/p>\n

With the result, the team also missed their chance to break Red Bull’s 2023 record for the earliest championship win.<\/p>\n

Now, the best McLaren can do is tie the record by securing the title in Singapore, which would see both teams win with six races remaining.<\/p>\n

Despite the setback, for Piastri, the title race is still a long fight.<\/p>\n

“There’s still a long way to go and if you have good or bad weekends, the championships are far from over, so that’s what I’m focussed on,” he said.<\/p>\n

The title fight continues at the Singapore Grand Prix on September 21 in two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Oscar Piastri‘s retirement in Azerbaijan gave McLaren teammate Lando Norris a golden opportunity to gain ground in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-160194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}