Oscar Piastri over Lando Norris? Rethinking McLaren’s F1 championship contenders

Perhaps we all got it wrong.

For those of us who tipped Lando Norris to win the F1 drivers’ championship this season, maybe we should have in fact picked the other McLaren driver — Oscar Piastri.

Norris had seemed the logical choice. In 2024 he had pressed Max Verstappen closer than any other driver had done for the past four years. He finished the campaign in excellent form and spoke of a new-found mental fortitude.

Norris was making the right nosies for a champion-elect and the way he held off the two Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz at the 2024 Abu Dhabi GP to help clinch the constructors’ title for McLaren was further evidence that he had learned what he needed to do to pry Verstappen’s fingers off the world champions’ trophy.

Added gravitas to support the opinion he was the favourite was given by his impressive performance in the season-opening race in Melbourne. The Brit even overcame a moment when he slipped off track in the wet only to recover to win the race when it would have been easier to have gone into a tailspin.

In the same race, Piastri also struggled in the wet, only his off-track episode saw him spin on the grass and dropped him down the field before recovering to finish in ninth place.

But that error aside, Piastri, 24, has been exemplary this season. His performance over the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend was particularly impressive. This, after all, was a track where McLaren had never won before. In fact, before last weekend, the Woking-based team had only led for eight laps in a Bahrain GP — and those came way back in 2007 with Lewis Hamilton.

Piastri took the victory, pole and set the fastest lap of the race in a memorable  hat-trick. It was also his 30th consecutive finish in the points in an impressive run that has probably not got the plaudits it deserved.
The Australian crossed the line nearly 16 seconds ahead of second-placed George Russell; a landslide in this current formula of ultra-completive cars.

The final statistic is that the Bahrain Grand Prix was only his 50th race in F1 — a number that is easy to forget given his maturity behind the wheel.

To those close to him, Piastri’s title challenge is not unexpected. They speak of a one-of-a-kind talent with a sixth-sense for feel, which coupled with McLaren excellent MCL39, is now capable of delivering wins week after week.

By contrast, Norris endured a scrappy Bahrain GP to finish third but it was his post-race comments which serve as the biggest concern. He said: “I’m surprised I’m achieving anything at the minute with how I feel in the car. I’m not comfortable, I’m not happy and I’m not feeling good. To be getting these results… I’m quite surprised because something’s not clicking.”

These are worrying times for Norris and his title aspirations, given the situation on Piastri’s side of the garage which presents a view of ascendency.

Of course, as the idiom goes, ‘one swallow does not make the summer’ but it is perhaps enough to make us to rethinking those early world champion-winning predictions.