Former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says he has \u201cnever seen anything like\u201d the contrasting form switch between McLaren\u2019s drivers in the F1 title race.<\/p>\n
The battle for world championship glory has taken a major twist in recent months, with Lando Norris<\/a>\u2019s sensational run of form enabling him to turn what was a 34-point deficit after the Dutch Grand Prix six races ago into a 24-point advantage over McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri<\/a>.<\/p>\n While Norris has hit a purple patch of form, claiming four consecutive podiums and back-to-back victories in Mexico City and Brazil, Piastri\u2019s performances have dramatically nosedived and been littered by uncharacteristic mistakes.<\/p>\n Asked if he can recall another driver who has been able to flip the script around like Norris has in 2025, Steiner told The Red Flags podcast: \u201cNo, and the strange thing here is the switch between Oscar and Lando.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Oscar did until five races ago, now Lando is doing. It\u2019s the complete opposite. It\u2019s like they said \u2018let\u2019s switch roles now\u2019. It\u2019s very weird, I\u2019ve never seen anything like this and I didn\u2019t expect it. I don\u2019t think many people expected it.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Steiner backs Norris for F1 title glory<\/p>\n Steiner has tipped Norris to continue his momentum and go on to be crowned world champion, and he believes the Briton will go from strength to strength.<\/p>\n \u201cFor Lando, becoming world champion, obviously it puts you in a different bracket of drivers, if you won a world championship. That\u2019s where he will be and I think his confidence will be very high,\u201d Steiner explained.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does it do for McLaren? For next year, we don\u2019t know who is where next year with the regulations, but for sure it proves them right what they did, that they didn\u2019t interfere with the championship battle. They can go away with that one and I think they will milk that one if it happens.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the winner will be Lando and he will be in that bracket of drivers\u2019 which are world champions and he fought for it. Everybody had written him off to win this championship and now he came back. That makes you even better. It wasn\u2019t an easy win.\u201d<\/p>\n On what Piastri would need to do if he misses out on the title this year, Steiner added: \u201cIf that happens, he just needs to regroup over the winter and come back stronger than before. But he could come back, because I still rate him highly.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says he has \u201cnever seen anything like\u201d the contrasting form switch between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,817,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-288216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-motor","12":"tag-motor-sports","13":"tag-motosport","14":"tag-motosports","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288216","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=288216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}