Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris told Max Verstappen would have won title ‘two months ago’ for McLaren

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Red Bull’s Max Verstappen will go into the 2025 season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with the chance to deny McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri the F1 drivers’ title.

The 28-year-old trails Norris by just 12 points atop the 2025 F1 drivers’ championship with a round to go. Piastri is third in the standings with a 16-point deficit to his McLaren teammate, and he also needs a lot more to go in his favour at Yas Marina to claim the title this weekend.

Piastri seemed on course to become Australia’s first champion since 1980 earlier in the 2025 F1 season. But the 24-year-old has fallen outside of the top two in the standings for the first time since round 4/24, having failed to outscore Verstappen in any of the past eight rounds.

Thanks to McLaren’s failed strategy costing Piastri the Qatar GP win last week, Verstappen stole the win to leave Lusail as Norris’ nearest rival. Verstappen has also now won five of the eight Grands Prix since he last finished behind Piastri during the Dutch GP in August with P2.

Alex Palou unreservedly thinks Max Verstappen would have won the 2025 F1 title ‘two months ago’ for McLaren

Verstappen left Zandvoort trailing Piastri atop the F1 drivers’ standings by 104 points. But he took full advantage of the floor update that Red Bull took to the Italian GP and a subsequent front wing update they ran at the Singapore GP to claw his way back into the 2025 title fight.

READ MORE: Piastri faces a repeat of what Horner told Webber after he lost the 2010 title

Who is going to win the 2025 Formula 1 drivers’ championship?

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The four-time defending champion’s confidence is clearly high, as well. Verstappen declared ahead of the Qatar GP that he would have won the 2025 F1 drivers’ title “a long time ago” if Red Bull had enjoyed the same dominance that McLaren had across the first half of the year.

IndyCar superstar Alex Palou unwaveringly agrees with Verstappen’s proclamation, and even suggests that the Red Bull ace would have won the title “two months ago” if he were driving for McLaren. Palou would not back Norris or Piastri to do it if they were in a one-man team.

Palou told Mundo Deportivo: “Would I have been champion with McLaren? I think so, but I don’t know. I think I could have fought for it, but we’ll never know. Maybe I got in the car and it was half a second slower. I’ve only driven it once, so it’s hard to say.

“Max with the McLaren? Absolutely, yes. Yes. He would have won weeks ago, two months ago. Do I think I would have won? I’m telling you, yes, I could have fought, but I wouldn’t have won two months earlier. But Max is the only one who would have.”

Lando Norris thinks Max Verstappen ‘doesn’t have a clue’ after his 2025 F1 title claim

McLaren’s MCL39 had a clear advantage over the Red Bull RB21 for much of the first part of the 2025 F1 season. Yet their dominance only truly showed between round eight in Monaco and round 15 in the Netherlands, during which Verstappen only earned two podium results.

READ MORE: Every F1 record that Lewis Hamilton held that Max Verstappen broke in 2024

Oscar Piastri could become the first F1 driver to finish third in a championship with five or more wins

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Verstappen had proven that the RB21 could challenge the MCL39 in the right conditions at the start of the year with his victories in Japan and Imola, along with fighting Piastri for the win in Saudi Arabia. The RB21 also became a true match for the MCL39 from the Italian GP.

McLaren shifted their focus onto the 2026 F1 regulations much earlier than Red Bull, as the latter believed they would benefit from continuing to develop their 2025 car in an effort to keep Verstappen’s title hopes alive. Now, he could become a five-time champion on Sunday.

But while Palou agrees with Verstappen’s claim that he would have won the title ages ago if he were at McLaren, Norris disagrees. Norris said Verstappen “doesn’t have much of a clue” in response to his rival’s suggestion, which followed Red Bull’s trend of spouting “nonsense”.

Norris declared, via the official F1 website: “He’s achieved an incredible amount, more than anyone generally dreams of achieving. So, you know, Max generally has a good clue about a lot of things, but there’s also a lot of things he doesn’t have much of a clue about.

“It’s also Red Bull’s way of going about things, this kind of aggressive nature and, yeah, just talking nonsense a lot of the time. So, it depends if you want to listen to it and talk about it, or you do what we do as a team, which is just kind of keep our heads down, keep focused. So, maybe he would have done. But he hasn’t so far, and he keeps trying.”