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Lando Norris won the F1 drivers’ title for the first time in 2025 after overturning a 34-point deficit to his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri, who finished the season in third.
Piastri looked like the champion-elect after he left the Dutch Grand Prix in round 15/24 with a 34-point lead over Norris and a 104-point margin over Max Verstappen of Red Bull. But he only outscored Norris in two of the last nine rounds and did not outscore Verstappen in any.
Norris failed to outscore Piastri in Qatar and Abu Dhabi to close out the 2025 F1 season. But the Briton had already done enough to take the F1 drivers’ championship with a P3 finish at Yas Marina, where Verstappen won to wrap up P2 in the standings by 11 points over Piastri.
Only two points separated Norris and Verstappen atop the standings, as the McLaren driver won his maiden F1 title to end the Dutchman’s run of four in a row. Verstappen still finished the year with the most Grand Prix wins (8) and pole positions (8) ahead of the McLaren duo.
Oscar Piastri’s Dutch GP pole forced Lando Norris to ‘turn a corner’ to win the 2025 F1 title
Jolyon Palmer thinks the Dutch GP in August was the turning point for Norris, but not due to his retirement while P2 behind Piastri at Zandvoort. Norris retired from the Dutch GP due to an oil fitting failure, which would be the only mechanical failure for the top three all season.
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Finish the sentence: In his Formula 1 career, Oscar PIastri will win ____ titles
Instead, Palmer feels Piastri sparked the “bedrock” on which Norris would build his 2025 F1 title win by beating the Briton in qualifying at Zandvoort. Piastri beat Norris to take pole for the Dutch GP, but the Australian only edged his teammate in qualifying at two further races.
Palmer told the F1 website: “In Q3, Piastri managed to up his game and snatch pole position away by just 0.012s – one of the smallest pole margins of the year. It was a kicker for Norris on a circuit which is extremely difficult to pass, as we saw in the Grand Prix.
“His eventual retirement left him with a 34-point deficit to Oscar in the championship, and he knew that only perfection would bring him back.
“From there, Lando proceeded to turn a corner in qualifying and we saw some huge pressure laps delivered, the result of which being that he was only beaten by Oscar twice in the last nine qualifying sessions. It became the bedrock of his success.”
Lando Norris out-qualified Oscar Piastri 7-2 after the 2025 F1 Dutch Grand Prix
Is qualifying Oscar Piastri’s biggest weakness?
Qualifying had been Norris’ stranglehold over Piastri since the latter joined McLaren in 2023 for his rookie season. The 26-year-old beat the 24-year-old 15-7 in 2023 and 20-4 in 2024. But Piastri’s Dutch GP pole put him 9-6 ahead of Norris, who ended the season 13-11 ahead.
Piastri produced a new lap record for Zandvoort to secure pole for the 2025 Dutch GP with a lap time of 1:08.662 on his first Q3 run. He found 0.302s between Q2 and Q3 to deny Norris, who had set the pace with a best effort of 1:08.874 during Q2 by 0.090s over the Australian.
Yet Piastri would only beat Norris during qualifying for a Grand Prix again during the 2025 F1 season in Singapore and Qatar. The Melbourne native edged the Briton by 0.062s for P3 and P5 in Singapore and by 0.108s for P1 and P2 in Qatar, after Norris made a mistake late in Q3.
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