Jolyon Palmer saw Lando Norris perfect a ‘really tricky’ problem that Oscar Piastri could not handle

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Oscar Piastri led the 2025 F1 drivers’ championship more than twice as long as Lando Norris, but he finished the year 13 points shy as his McLaren teammate won the title.

McLaren saw Norris start the 2025 F1 season by winning the Australian Grand Prix in March, which also dethroned Red Bull ace Max Verstappen from the top of the F1 drivers’ standings after 1,029 days. Yet Piastri won in Saudi Arabia just 35 days later to get the top spot in April.

Piastri also held onto first place in the championship for 189 days until Norris won in Mexico City in October. But the Australian failed to respond a second time, as the Briton went on to win his debut title 42 days later in Abu Dhabi by only two points over Verstappen in second.

Verstappen won the season-finale in Abu Dhabi to move onto eight Grand Prix wins for this year, one more than Norris and Piastri secured. The four-time champion even finished 2025 with the most pole positions with eight, ahead of Norris who had seven and Piastri with six.

Lando Norris’ start in the Abu Dhabi GP showed Jolyon Palmer he could cope with the F1 title nerves

Norris also appeared to handle the title pressure more than Piastri could towards the end of the 2025 F1 season. Jolyon Palmer believes the Briton showed he had his emotions in check at the start of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with his launch from second on the grid last Sunday.

READ MORE: McLaren driver Lando Norris’ life outside F1 from parents to celebration

Palmer told the F1 YouTube channel: “Interestingly, if you jump on board with Lando, we can see the pressure of a title challenger with everything in his hands on the final day.

“But these pre-start revs are really tricky. You’ve got to be bang on to get a good launch… If we just look at that, which is Lando perfectly on his pre-start revs with the five red light LEDs up in the middle. But just momentarily, he’s put down the throttle a little bit too much.

“Then, he’s trying to get it right and he takes it off, and you can see that he’s flirting with it being too low on the pre-start revs. All the time the lights are coming on.

“So, this is now three red lights, four red lights, and he manages to sort it out and be nailed on by the time he then drops the clutch. But it shows that the small things could have made a big difference to Lando’s race.

“He did really well to combat this. He’s just trying to make sure that the start is nailed on, but you’ve got to be so steady with the throttle [and] make sure your clutch drop is good.

“Remember Oscar jumping the start in Baku, and then having an absolute nightmare there, [which] cost him critical points. And this is the sort of thing [that] title pressure can do.”

Oscar Piastri jumped the start of the Azerbaijan GP, before crashing out of the race

The 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix will be remembered as Piastri’s worst weekend in his pursuit of the F1 drivers’ title, even after McLaren’s double disqualification in Las Vegas due to floor plank wear. Piastri capped his error-strewn round in Baku with his sole retirement this term.

READ MORE: Every error that cost Lando Norris points in his failed 2024 F1 title challenge

Oscar Piastri’s classy response to losing the title to Lando Norris

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Piastri crashed during qualifying for the Azerbaijan GP without setting a Q3 time, when the 24-year-old buried his McLaren MCL39 in the barrier at Turn 3. Then, as Palmer references, Piastri crashed out of the Azerbaijan GP after he also jumped the start of September’s race.

Issues snowballed quickly, as it appeared that the Australian struggled to get over the events from Monza two weeks before. McLaren told Piastri to give Norris back P2 during the Italian GP, having undercut his teammate who they had told would stay ahead if he pitted second.

Norris made a flurry of costly errors himself earlier in the 2025 F1 season when he faced the initial pressure of being the title favourite. For example, Norris called himself “clueless” after qualifying in Bahrain and an “idiot” in Saudi Arabia, but he improved as the term progressed.