Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are the clear title favourites for the 2025 F1 season, but so far it looks like the Australian has the upper hand.
Piastri has now won five of the nine races that have been held, and although Norris closed the gap to within three points after his dominant Monaco victory, that has now risen to 10 points after Spain.
It is likely to be a feature throughout the 2025 season, and Norris needs to ensure that he can at least outscore Piastri on a few occasions; otherwise, the Australian will run away with victory.
McLaren will also be wary of a potential issue with Mercedes power units, after seeing three separate failures in the last three races.
Discussing what Norris needs to do to beat Piastri on the Fast and Curious podcast, commentator David Croft outlined one thing he thinks the Briton must do to have the edge on track.
David Croft outlines where Lando Norris needs to focus to beat Oscar Piastri
Qualifying has been one of the most important elements of F1 in 2025, as evidenced by the fact that nearly all the races have been won from pole.
After he made mistakes in Spain, Croft believes Norris must focus more on extracting the most out of these sessions by studying a key area.
“He needs to qualify ahead of his teammate regularly, getting those pole positions,” said Croft.
“He needs to keep working on where he is struggling, where things haven’t gone his way, study the data and find a way to translate the deficiencies in the data into efficiencies in the car.
“It’s revision, because the answer will be there in the data.”
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Lando Norris currently trailing Oscar Piastri in qualifying head-to-head
The stats suggest Croft is right as Norris is trailing Piastri by 4-5 in qualifying, in terms of the amount of times either has been beaten.
Piastri has also scored more poles this season than Norris, who has only started from the first grid slot at Melbourne and Monaco this year.
| Category | Lando Norris | Oscar Piastri |
| 2025 points | 176 | 186 |
| Grand Prix results | 4 | 5 |
| Grand Prix qualifying | 4 | 5 |
| Grand Prix wins | 2 | 5 |
| Grand Prix poles | 2 | 4 |
| Grand Prix podiums | 9 | 9 |
| Best finish | 1st | 1st |
| Retirements | 0 | 0 |
| Fastest laps | 5 | 2 |
| Grand Prix points finishes | 9 | 9 |
| Sprint results | 1 | 1 |
| Sprint Qualifying | 0 | 2 |
| Sprint wins | 1 | 0 |
| Sprint poles | 0 | 0 |
| Sprint podiums | 1 | 2 |
Norris does have more fastest laps than Piastri, suggesting that he is faster over one-lap pace than the Australian.
Much of that is circumstantial of course, with tyre offsets and fuel levels playing a role in races. But Norris will need to work on these areas if he wants to overturn the current points deficit heading into the summer break in August.
