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The 2025 Formula One season title showdown has hit a crescendo as the bandwagon gets ready for a mad dash four-race sprint over the next month, which gets underway this weekend at Interlagos, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
While McLaren has long since sealed the constructors’ title, the drivers’ battle is now set to go down to the wire. What started as a two-horse race between the two McLaren drivers – Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri – has completely transformed since the season resumed after the summer break in late August.
It seemed the reigning four-time world champion Max Verstappen would finally be dethroned, and his chances looked bleak post his home race – the Dutch Grand Prix.
It was a pivotal moment in the championship when Piastri won his seventh race of the season on a day when his teammate retired due to engine gremlins, while Verstappen came home second.
At that point, the Australian driver had a 34-point cushion over Norris and was a whopping 104 points ahead of Verstappen.
However, since then, the picture has transformed dramatically as Piastri has undergone one of the most dramatic slumps in form from a driver in a championship fight, allowing his teammate to nose ahead by a point.
More importantly, Verstappen and Red Bull have not stood still, forcing their way back into contention with three wins in the last five races, narrowing the gap with the leader to just 36 points.
With four races left – there are sprint weekends in Brazil and Qatar, too – a total of 116 points are up for grabs, and the championship could go down to the final race in Abu Dhabi next month.
F1 will consider itself lucky that what looked like a slightly underwhelming season for two-thirds of the way has sprung to life, and will keep all the stakeholders interested right till the end.
Irrespective of who wins, the 2025 season has already become one of the most exciting the sport has seen, and there is a compelling narrative arc for the three title protagonists.
Norris’ destiny
At the start of the year, the stars were aligned for the British driver. Last year, he had an outside shot at the title, thanks to McLaren vaulting up the pecking order mid-season even as Red Bull lost its competitive edge.
However, Verstappen had built up a massive lead in the first third of the season, the Dutchman’s experience and superior racecraft helping him take the chequered flag in seven out of the first 10 races. It proved to be a vital cushion when Norris’ charge began from the Miami Grand Prix in May.
At the same time, Norris wasn’t clinical and failed to maximise his chances. Crucially, he often came off second-best in his wheel-to-wheel battles with Verstappen. Though there was a path to the title, the McLaren driver wasn’t ready for the moment and tightened up a bit when he needed to be inch-perfect.
But the experience of last year was the perfect training ground when Norris had a chance to fight for the crown from round one. When 2025 arrived, he stomped to victory in Australia, and the stars were starting to align.
However, the 2025 McLaren has not been to his liking, and he relinquished his lead by the fifth race to his teammate, who got to grips with the car better and also raised his game by several notches.
The team even introduced a bespoke front suspension from the Canadian GP for Norris to help him get a better feel of the front end of the car. Though he had the rub of the green going in his favour a few times when the team’s strategy benefitted him more than his teammate, who was ahead of him, his chances seemed bleak after Zandvoort.
Norris, though, didn’t throw in the towel, and a serious meeting with the team after qualifying for the Singapore GP to get what he needed from the car has sparked a sensational turnaround in his fortunes.
In the last two races, Norris has been spectacular, and his victory by more than half a minute in Mexico City showed he was back to his best. He now has momentum and is leading the standings for the first time since April. At least three of the four upcoming races are expected to suit the McLaren, and Norris is now the favourite for the crown.
The 25-year-old has been with McLaren since his debut in 2019 and has played a key role in bringing the team forward from a midfield outfit to two constructors’ titles. If he wins, it will be a just reward for his unflinching loyalty to the team during the dark times, even when there were tempting offers from rivals.
Even as Norris has improved in recent races, his ascent to the top has been helped in large part by Piastri’s nosedive in form since winning the Dutch GP. Not many expected the 24-year-old to give Norris a run for his money. Piastri finished ninth in his home race, skidding off in the wet from second place and was 23 points behind Norris. But the Melburnian won three out of the following four races to take the lead and held on to it till the previous round in Mexico City.
Piastri improved tremendously in his qualifying compared to last year and won races on tracks where he was significantly slower than Norris in 2024, like China, Spain, and Zandvoort, illustrating the massive strides he has made over the winter.
Tough time
But since winning the Dutch GP, Piastri has been a pale shadow of the driver he was in the first half of the season. It has coincided with McLaren’s decision to stop developing its car, allowing Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari to catch up.
Throughout the year, he has also been at the receiving end of strategies that seemed to favour his teammate, prompting fans to spin conspiracy theories that the team is favouring Norris.
But for the large part, Piastri’s current position is primarily of his own doing. Worryingly, he has been error-prone, something we rarely saw in the early part of the year. In the first half, he was the epitome of consistency, even winning on weekends when he didn’t have outright pace but was more clinical, making fewer errors.
His Baku weekend, where he crashed in qualifying, then jumped the start and crashed out of the race on the opening lap, was a shocker. And things have gotten worse since then. The last two rounds in the USA and Mexico City saw Piastri qualify sixth and seventh and finish fifth on both occasions, giving up the championship lead to Norris.
The team identified that Piastri still needs to improve his driving style on low-grip circuits. The fact that he also triggered a crash in the Sprint race in Austin that also took out his teammate did not help matters.
Though he has shown great ability to come back strongly after setbacks, whether he can do so again with just four races to go and the title on the line remains to be seen. One silver lining was that he made a breakthrough in adjusting his driving style during the race in Mexico after qualifying. With that confidence, if Piastri does get out of the rut and triumphs in the end, it would be a tremendous achievement for someone to clinch the crown in only his third year. For now, the momentum has shifted decisively away from him, and Piastri has only himself to blame if he ends up falling short.
Phoenix rises
Even as the McLaren drivers squabble among themselves, Verstappen has shown yet again why he is the best driver on the grid and is a cut above the rest. What separates the legends from the outstanding athletes is the ability to overcome adversity and prevail in the end, and the way Verstappen has shown that he should never be counted out until it is mathematically impossible.
Since the summer break, the 28-year-old has scored the most points (119) with opportunistic victories in Monza, Baku and Austin, finishing second and third in Singapore and Mexico City, steadily chipping away at the gap to the leader.
It is also a credit to the team that it has thrown all its resources into developing this year’s car, even if it compromises next year’s development amid massive regulatory changes. The upgrades, coupled with a different engineering approach, have allowed Verstappen to set up the vehicle aggressively, one he can handle and extract maximum performance from.
Even though he has done his best to maximise results, he needed some help from the McLaren drivers, and they have obliged. The quirk of F1 is that teammates are anything but that, and by fighting amongst themselves, they can often open the door for someone to steal the prize right under their noses.
As long as Norris and Piastri take points away from each other, it simplifies the math for Verstappen if he beats one or even both drivers. And it won’t even be the first time such a thing has happened in F1.
In 2007, McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso’s epic rivalry allowed Kimi Raikkonen to steal his only driver’s title by one point. In 1986, the Williams duo of Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet opened the door for McLaren’s Alain Prost to his second world title, pipping Mansell by two points and Piquet by three.
Though Verstappen is not the odds-on favourite, still trailing by 35 points, he has undoubtedly been the best driver this year. If he indeed manages to clinch his fifth consecutive title, this will easily be the best crown of his career and could quite possibly be considered one of the best title campaigns in the sport’s 75-year history.
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The thrills and spills continue as title race vrooms towards climax
