Lando Norris has finally matched Oscar Piastri for one thing all F1 champions need

New York Times

16-07-2025

Maybe Lando Norris just needs nose scars to accompany particularly significant Formula One wins.
He got his first while enthusiastically celebrating his Miami 2024 breakthrough. After his recent 2025 British Grand Prix victory, it was a fan-shield screen breaking and felling a photographer that caused the cut to his nose. At least Norris could laugh about both. Winning will do that to a person.
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But what happened at Silverstone earlier this month was more substantial than just Norris securing his first F1 triumph at his home race, as big as that is for any driver.
His 2024 campaign was transformed by Miami, where McLaren finally completed the upgrade journey it'd been on since Austria 2023 to really topple Red Bull. It's too soon to say Silverstone will do the same to his 2025 campaign, but it was different to what had come before in one key aspect.
It was Norris's first win this season when he's been second best to Oscar Piastri across an event overall. And winning on off-weekends is a key pillar of all title-winning seasons.
Piastri has been the one usually winning on his bad days this season. His Jeddah and Miami victories this campaign both could've gone to Norris (although in each, when it came to battling Red Bull's Verstappen, Piastri forced the issue superbly both times). Canada also might've gone very differently had Norris not messed up yet again in qualifying.
But Norris has simply never done this before in F1, winning when he's not the fastest driver. In his three post-Miami wins in 2024, Norris was clearly the best driver on those weekends. Admittedly, he could have won more last season but for circumstances conspiring against him.
Back in Canada, when Norris's misjudgment while battling Piastri late on led to him crashing instantly out, 2025's firmly-established narrative had centered on the Briton's many mistakes. Had he been the one penalized for braking too sharply under the safety car (actually in both restarts, it transpired), that only would've intensified.
For Piastri, this was his first major error since crashing out in the Australian opener (and his off there was initially just a bit bigger than Norris's in the returning rain lottery). And Norris capitalized.
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It would've been fascinating to see how things might've played out between them in the closing stages at Silverstone without Piastri's penalty coming into play. After all, there was just 1.3 seconds to separate them ahead of those final stops for slicks. And, with Norris no longer tire-saving as he had been in the early stages when Piastri was blowing the field away at the start, there was seemingly very little in it. Piastri was pushing hard to keep his teammate out of DRS and any tiny mistake on the drying surface could've been the decisive factor.
But then, when the race contained Nico Hülkenberg ending his 239-race wait for an F1 podium, wanting a better end to the contest up front was being greedy. You can't have everything, as Christian Horner has found out to his considerable cost at Red Bull last week…
What's also interesting about this Norris revival is what has changed about the McLaren MCL39 in recent races.
Back in Canada, the team introduced a front suspension tweak that made this part slightly thicker on Norris's car (Piastri has eschewed it so far). This was aimed at fixing the numbness Norris had been feeling through his 'understanding of where the grip lies comes through my hands and through the steering wheel,' as he said ahead of the Silverstone weekend.
The suspension changes should make the steering feel ever so slightly heavier, but that in turn should pay Norris back with a better feeling of how his car will react under braking and what the tires will do through corners where big braking is required.
In the aftermath of his Silverstone win, Norris insisted 'people talk about (the suspension change) probably too much' and 'it's something the team believed might give me more feeling and I just roll with that.' And his Canada and Silverstone Q3 mistakes bare this position out — it isn't a wholesale switch from imperfect to perfect.
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But at the very least the change seems to be offering Norris further mental reassurance, along with the work he has done with his engineering team to try and iron out those costly qualifying moments that peppered the first half of his 2025.
'I certainly felt more in Austria. The car is always all over the place in Canada, so it's hard to judge things there,' Norris replied when I asked about the impact of this development at Silverstone.
'But certainly in Canada, I felt like we unlocked a little bit more, but I also don't feel like I'm still back to the level necessarily that I was at last year with (steering) feeling. But it's a complicated one at the same time because a lot of other things have changed too. So, as a team, we're working hard. Obviously, I'm working very hard with my team to understand more things and tried more stuff in the simulator, and expand my vocabulary of driving.'
McLaren's work behind the suspension tweak came after Norris made it 'clear to the team' that he 'certainly wasn't happy' with how the MCL39 was feeling through his steering wheel compared to the MCL38. Doing this has actually made McLaren's season more complicated, in that it now needs to manufacture twice the amount of these front suspension components — the older spec that Piastri prefers, plus the new ones for Norris. All of this will mean a cost-cap hit.
But Norris is clearly feeling boosted by McLaren's willingness to make such a change. And it seemingly hasn't decreased the development output overall in the team's quest to try and make F1's best car even better.
At Silverstone, it introduced a major floor upgrade that was only assessed in FP1 — on both cars. This is chiefly aimed at making the MCL39 better in high-speed turns, where Red Bull's RB21 has a rare, clear edge. Expect to see it back on for the next race.
McLaren is confident that its practice experiments at Silverstone showed this part to be working as it wanted. And now the best test of trying to improve in high-speed corners is next up at Spa. This is the last track featuring high-speed turns before F1 heads to track types where McLaren should utterly dominate: the lower-speed Hungaroring and Zandvoort layouts.
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Spa's rapid nature also means the pressure is still on Norris if he is to finally get back level with Piastri on points before the summer break because the championship leader, currently eight points ahead of his teammate, is just mighty in high-speed corners. This comes down to his smooth, precise style minimizing confidence-sapping rear-end snaps.
Hungary and the Netherlands follow either side of the summer break and their long-corner-packed layouts should swing this constant pendulum of a two-horse season more firmly towards Norris.
Hanging on against Piastri at Spa would be a decent outcome for him. Nicking more success Silverstone-style would go a long way to seeing his 2025 campaign and its narrative transformed.
But, given how good he was other than at safety car restarts last time out, Piastri really doesn't have to do much to stop all that in its tracks.
(Top image: Jay Hirano/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)