With four wins in the first six races of 2025, Oscar Piastri has already eclipsed teammate Lando Norris’s overall win tally, despite being widely seen as the ‘second driver’ at McLaren for a long time. That’s no longer the case. In fact, his performances so far have been compared to Max Verstappen’s dominant 2023 season, where he won 19 out of 22 races. A tough season lies ahead for Norris.
Piastri, with his Miami GP win last Sunday, now leads the championship standings by 16 points ahead of Norris, who was the championship favorite heading into the season. Norris also seems to be running out of ways to respond.
With just one victory so far—coming in the opening round—Norris is certainly not making the most of the dominant package McLaren have given him this season.
Journalist Nick Golding believes that if Norris continues to lose ground to Piastri in the upcoming races, he will need more than just race wins to mount a serious title challenge.
Piastri now has more wins in F1 than teammate Norris…
He’s participated in 82 fewer Grand Prix. pic.twitter.com/7SsKUPv8D0
— Autosport (@autosport) May 4, 2025
Golding sees no reason why Piastri “couldn’t go the remainder of the season finishing every single race in the top four, in the top five“, he shared on the RacingNews365 podcast.
“It’s going to take, really now you feel a bad race for him (Piastri) and a good race for Lando to really see that momentum swing because even if, for example, Lando goes and wins in Imola, if Oscar’s on the podium it’s not really going to be that much eaten into his lead,” he added.
While it is still early days in the season, with 18 races remaining, one cannot deny that momentum is definitely on Piastri’s side. Another reason the Australian seems to be getting the better of his teammate is his strong mentality.
Parallel passing for the McLaren pairing
These moves from Piastri and Norris were crucial overtakes on the way to their 1-2 finish #F1 #MiamiGP pic.twitter.com/MjFWQBesIR
— Formula 1 (@F1) May 5, 2025
Former F1 driver turned analyst Jolyon Palmer revealed after the Saudi Arabian GP weekend that Piastri appears to have the edge over Norris in two key areas — qualifying and mentality.
“I like his mentality,” Palmer said. “We kind of saw it a bit last year, some of the racing that he put in—Monza, in Baku—where he got the win or second in Monza. But he’s just so chill, isn’t he? He’s so ruthless, calm, calculated. If he’s got the one-lap pace, he’s also got the mentality to execute on race day, and that’s what we’ve seen so far”.
That’s where Norris seems to be falling short, as he repeatedly berates himself after every mistake. According to driver coach Martin Villari, such constant negative thinking can form a vicious cycle, with the subconscious eventually accepting the negativity one reinforces. Norris, perhaps, is caught in that very struggle, as one mistake often appears to lead to another.
