Lando Norris’s outside chance of competing for last year’s world championship faded as he made too many mistakes and regularly came off second-best in his skirmishes with Max Verstappen. His assured drive to victory in the rain-hit season-opener at Melbourne – one brief off notwithstanding – looked like an early sign that 2025 was going to be different.
Lando Norris
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 1 (x4) | 10 |
| GP finish | 1 (x5) | 18 |
| Points | 275 | |
But his next outing shot that theory to pieces. Neither McLaren driver excelled in qualifying for the sprint race at Shanghai, but Norris compounded his poor sixth on the grid by slipping up at the start and falling to eighth. At least he salvaged second behind team mate and championship rival Oscar Piastri in the main event.
The litany of missed opportunities grew over the following races, however. Verstappen outdid both McLaren drivers in qualifying at Suzuka, where Norris never looked like prising the lead out of his hands. In Bahrain he qualified third, fluffed his start and could only recover to third. Jeddah was worse again: Norris smashed his car up in Q3, and though third looked possible from 10th on the grid, Charles Leclerc beat him to it.
Although Norris had the season’s quickest car at his disposal, he wasn’t entirely comfortable with its handling to begin with. Nonetheless he took a fortuitous victory in the Miami sprint race and could have had another in the main event had Verstappen not forced him onto the run-off at the start. In Monaco, however, Norris mastered his qualifying troubles at the best possible time and finally took his second grand prix victory of the season.
McLaren introduced a new suspension configuration in Canada, which only Norris used. He was clearly quicker than Piastri late in the race but took himself out in a jaw-droppingly misjudged move on his team mate during the final laps.
That moment now looks like a turning point. Since then he’s won three out of four grands prix and trimmed Piastri’s points lead to just nine.
After Canada, Austria was exactly the kind of result Norris needed: a calm pole-to-win conversion while under siege by his team mate. The cards fell his way at Silverstone when Piastri was penalised, though Norris had fought his way past Verstappen until a slow McLaren pit stop dropped him behind again.
The gap between them briefly closed at Spa, where Norris nicked another point off Piastri in the sprint race. But after beating him to pole position for the grand prix he couldn’t keep his team mate contained on the notorious run to Les Combes, and followed him home. Norris regained those lost points in Hungary, where he made a poor start, but ran a long opening stint and pinched the win on a one-stop strategy.
Norris’s season so far has featured too many slip-ups, contributing to this low ranking, but crucially he has never lacked raw speed compared to his junior team mate, particularly on race day. He’s had the summer break to reflect on that fact he would be leading the title fight if it had not been for his moment of madness in Montreal. And the last few races showed he can put his early season disappointments behind him and prevail in an all-McLaren fight for the drivers’ title.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories – and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
