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'Not comfortable': Piastri plays down F1 advantage
Ian Chadband, AAP • September 1st, 2025 12:25 pm
Oscar Piastri with some of his celebrating McLaren teammates after his Dutch Grand Prix win | Photo: AP
Oscar Piastri says his 34-point lead in the Formula One championship still feels far from comfortable -- and he may now have to face the danger of a "chilled out" Lando Norris who's vowed to "go for it" after his wretched misfortune at the Dutch Grand Prix.
Luckless Norris's retirement with seven laps left at Zandvoort, after a yet-to-be-known mechanical issue left smoke billowing from his McLaren, meant the victorious Piastri's lead in their world championship duel has now increased to a significant 34 points.
With nine races left, that spells potentially terrific news for the Australian, who could afford to be beaten into second place by Norris at the next four races and still find himself leading the standings with five grand prix left.
But as McLaren chiefs began their investigation into what went wrong with the stricken car in the race denouement when he was trying to chase down his teammate, Piastri felt that his teammate's bad luck showed just how easily and swiftly fortunes could change in the remaining nine races.
"There's still a long way to go. I need to keep pushing and trying to win races still. I wouldn't say it's a very comfortable margin," Piastri said, describing Norris as "incredibly unfortunate".
"As we saw today, it can change with one DNF very, very quickly. So this far out from the end of the year, it's not a comfortable gap."
But it's enough of an advantage for Norris to admit: "The only thing I can do is try to win every race. That's going to be difficult but I'll make sure I give it everything I can.
"It's only made it harder for me and put me under more pressure, but it's almost a big enough gap now that I can just chill out about it and just go for it."
His problem is that Piastri's sheer relentless consistency now makes him look like a daunting figure to get near to in the championship race.
"It's hard to get things back on someone who's just good in pretty much every situation," Norris admitted.
That's because Piastri has now won seven of the 15 races this year and only been off the podium twice - when he was ninth in the season-opener in Australia and fourth at the Canadian GP.
Even more forbidding news for Norris is that this was an unprecedented weekend for Piastri in that, for the first time, he achieved the 'grand slam' of taking pole, earning the race victory, leading every lap of the race and having the fastest lap.
This hasn't been achieved by a McLaren driver since Mika Hakkinen at the 1998 Monaco Grand Prix, and no Australian has done it since Jack Brabham at the British Grand Prix in 1966.
