Oscar Piastri told he did something ‘brilliantly’ that forced Lando Norris into mistakes at the Belgium Grand Prix

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Oscar Piastri took his sixth victory of the 2025 Formula 1 season and extended his advantage in the Drivers’ Championship over teammate Lando Norris.

Norris had the upper hand on the Saturday when he qualified on pole, and when the race was deemed too wet to have a standing start following a lengthy delay, the Briton was given a chance to speed off with a rolling start.

Piastri knew he had an opportunity on the opening lap to overtake Norris using the slipstream, after the same happened with him during the Sprint race with Max Verstappen.

Anthony Davidson highlighted how Piastri caused Norris to take an unfavourable line into La Source, which gave the Australian a better run through Eau Rouge to overtake for the lead on the opening lap.

Discussing Piastri’s victory on the F1 TV post-race show, Alex Brundle has explained why Piastri did something brilliant when racing Norris for the win.

Alex Brundle thinks Oscar Piastri ‘brilliantly’ forced Lando Norris into mistakes

After Piastri overtook for the lead, it became a question of when to switch to slicks on the drying track. The Australian waited a handful of laps before diving into the pits for a set of mediums, but McLaren would split the strategies when they pitted Norris for a set of hards the next lap.

The hard tyre was not the favoured race tyre, but the cool conditions played into its strengths, enabling Norris to push for longer. But Brundle thinks Piastri did something intelligent while leading, which effectively forced the hand of Norris.

“What Piastri did so brilliantly is having enough pace while managing that medium tyre at the end of the race to force Lando to push,” said Brundle.

“They look like unforced errors while he’s driving around the race track trying to catch him, but he had to have that amount of pace if he wanted to make it to Piastri at the end.”

Alex Brundle thinks win was ‘on the table’ for Lando Norris

Despite Norris having more pace than Piastri during the race, a few mistakes cost him. A slow pit stop racked up lost time, then a mistake at La Source in the final laps cost Norris 1.2 seconds to Piastri.

“The pit stop for Lando was slow onto the hard tyre, so he lost a second there, another second on the outside of Pouhon,” explained Brundle.

“So when he looks back at all the seconds lost, remembering that you need to get within a second to use DRS and that helps you to make the overtake, I think it was on the table for Lando.”

Nico Rosberg thinks Lewis Hamilton would never make those mistakes Norris made when chasing a rival down for a win, and questioned if he has what it takes to win a title.