Biggest title comebacks in F1 history after Lando Norris caught Oscar Piastri for 2025 championship

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Lando Norris overturned a 34-point deficit to his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri to win the 2025 F1 drivers’ title, but it was not one of the top 10 comebacks in history.

Norris had kept relatively close to Piastri in their 2025 F1 title fight throughout the first half of the season. But a rare reliability failure caused Norris to retire from the Dutch Grand Prix, and it gifted Piastri a huge advantage through 15 of the 24 rounds.

The Brit was running in second place behind his teammate when his McLaren suffered an oil leak, which forced him to pull over at the side of the track. Norris’ DNF meant that when Piastri took the victory at Zandvoort, the Aussie extended his lead by the full 25 points.

Piastri even led Red Bull rival Max Verstappen by 104 points following the Dutch GP, and he would lead the 2025 championship for the most days by any driver. But a run of difficult results towards the end of the year denied him his first F1 title.

Lando Norris overturned a 34-point deficit to win the 2025 F1 drivers’ title

McLaren ordering Piastri to give P2 in the Italian GP back to Norris derailed the former’s season, as he struggled to move on before crashing out of qualifying and the Grand Prix in Azerbaijan.

Piastri also struggled to get over Norris making contact on Lap 1 in Singapore, and he caused the crash that took both McLaren drivers out of the F1 Sprint in Texas. His issues snowballed at such a rate that Norris regained the lead of the standings in Mexico.

Victory for Norris in the Mexico City Grand Prix, while Piastri could only finish in fifth, meant the Brit was able to leapfrog his teammate in the championship standings with four rounds remaining. Norris held on, and also withstood Verstappen’s pressure, to clinch the title.

Verstappen almost produced what would have been the biggest title comeback in F1 history had he won the 2025 drivers’ title. The Dutchman finished the year just two points shy of Norris, after he outscored the Briton in seven of the final nine rounds.

So, with that in mind, F1 Oversteer has taken a look at the biggest title comebacks in F1 history to date.

Formula 1’s biggest title comebacks throughout history

It’s difficult to compare title comebacks across different eras because F1’s points system has been changed multiple times.

But back in 2022, The Race went through the archives and applied the modern formula to create a standardised leaderboard. They found that McLaren’s James Hunt had pulled off the greatest turnaround back in 1976 when he pipped Ferrari’s Niki Lauda by just one point.

The results from the 1976 title fight should be taken with a pinch of salt, as Lauda suffered his nasty crash at the Nurburgring and was forced to miss two races.

The Austrian driver nearly died from his injuries, but he made a miraculous recovery and returned at the Italian Grand Prix.

Heading into the season finale in Japan, Lauda was even leading McLaren rival Hunt by three points. However, treacherous weather conditions saw the Ferrari driver withdraw from the race, handing Hunt his only championship victory.

The only driver who has overcome a similar obstacle in the modern era is Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn prevailed in a four-way tussle involving McLaren duo Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton (both of whom finished a point behind) and Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa.

Verstappen also overhauled a 46-point deficit to Charles Leclerc in 2022, while Sebastian Vettel rallied to defeat Alonso a decade earlier. Red Bull quickly got on top of the ground-effect regulations and saw Verstappen win the title by 146 points.