Oscar Piastri was flying during the Belgian Grand Prix practice, through the famed 7km long Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps last weekend, topping the session with absolute ease. The young Australian kept his foot on the throttle in sprint qualifying to beat his McLaren teammate Lando Norris by a big margin of six-tenths of a second.
But come qualifying, Norris edged Piastri to take pole for the main race. On Sunday though, it was Piastri again who topped his teammate to take the race win and extend his championship lead to 16 points.
This has been the story of not just the last Grand Prix weekend but the entire topsy turvy season with the dominant hand shifting from one McLaren driver to the other.
By now — after 13 of 24 races — it is quite clear that one of the two drivers of the Woking-based squad is likely to win the championship unless something untoward happens. Despite Max Verstappen’s sheer brilliance, which has earned him two wins this season, the Dutchman is unlikely to challenge for the title which will bring an end to the Red Bull driver’s run of four successive championships. But which McLaren driver is going to end the run?
“It is a fight between the two McLaren drivers unless something goes wrong. The whole season has been going one time in favour of one of them and then the other and they both seem to react to each other in different ways,” former world champion Jacques Villeneuve, who beat 7-time champion Michael Schumacher in an epic fight to win the title in 1997, told HT in an interaction.
“It is really hard to judge. I feel that Norris still has the edge on speed but Piastri has a cooler head. So, it balances out. Both drivers seem to perform better when they are not leading the championship, when they are the hunters and not the hunted. Leading the championship has a huge effect on your mind, the weight you carry on your shoulders.”
Norris, 25, led the championship for the first four races before Piastri overtook him after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Though the 24-year-old has led the title fight since then, the battle has been extremely close with the two coming together in Montreal, which led to Norris’s only DNF (did not finish) of the season.
Had the Briton not crashed into his teammate while chasing him, the gap — 16 points currently — could have been negligible or even seen Norris in the championship lead.
“Lando seems to have recovered a bit (from a 22-point deficit after the Canada crash). He seems to be more emotional than Piastri. When you take the two into account, it’s really hard to know which one has the better shot at winning,” said Villeneuve in a call facilitated by FanCode, the official broadcaster of F1 in India.
“You can tell the effect on both drivers. The minute Piastri became the championship leader, it had an effect on him that doesn’t look like it was super positive. The same thing with Lando. Once he wasn’t the championship leader, he started driving a little bit harder like he did last year. So, it does have a big psychological effect.”
It seemed in the initial part of the season that Verstappen, who on Thursday confirmed he will stay with Red Bull in 2026, was also in the title fight. Former race winner Jean Alesi had in fact told HT that the Dutch reigning world champion will steal the title from the two McLaren drivers as they keep taking points from each other.
But the last few races have changed the dynamics. Verstappen has gone three races without a podium, the first time it has happened in six years.
“Max is a different beast. He’s a pure racer. He doesn’t get too affected. It doesn’t matter whether he’s leading or running 10th, he will fight as hard. He’s always out there giving his 100%, taking the risks, trying to always get that extra 10th of a second or that extra position, whether he’s leading or not,” said the 54-year-old Canadian.
“You could see a little bit of frustration, because he doesn’t like not winning. You can see that the team is going in the wrong direction. So that is a little bit frustrating. But he recovered very quickly from that. He seems to be the same Max now that he was when he was winning every race. He’s one of the rare drivers that doesn’t seem to be too affected.”
