ZANDVOORT, Netherlands — Lando Norris had barely registered the whiff of smoke in his cockpit when reality hit: his McLaren was crawling to a halt, his Dutch Grand Prix over — and with it, a brutal hit to his title hopes.
Up until that moment, Norris had been chasing teammate and title rival Oscar Piastri for the win. It was another chapter of what has been a compelling battle between two drivers who have been remarkably closely matched at most of the contests Formula 1 has held in 2025. In an instant, the whole dynamic of the championship fight changed.
“There’s nothing the team told me or said,” Norris said when asked if he had any warning an issue was coming. “I think it was pretty instant as well. I don’t know what the actual issue was even. The engine just shut off and that was it.”
It was a major moment of drama. Instead of Piastri increasing his title lead to 16 points in another spellbindingly faultless grand prix weekend, he instead left the Netherlands with 18 more in his back pocket, bringing his advantage to 34 with nine races to go.
While perhaps not “one hand on the championship trophy” territory this far out, the idea of F1 crowning Australia’s first world champion since Alan Jones in 1981 felt as tantalizingly real as ever on Sunday evening. Of course, Sunday was also an example of how quickly a driver’s luck can change. It’s not an insurmountable points gap by any means, and the ever-pragmatic Piastri was quick to point that out.
“There’s still a long way to go. I need to keep pushing and trying to win races still,” he said after taking his seventh win of the season. “I wouldn’t say it’s a very comfortable margin. As we saw today, it can change with one DNF very, very quickly.”
While that is true, it’s hard to look past the obvious fact coming out of the Dutch Grand Prix: Norris’ car issue has given a significant points buffer to the McLaren driver who has been both the most consistent and the most regularly impressive this season. What had looked like a tight and unpredictable title fight has now slanted massively in Piastri’s position. While his teammate’s bout of misfortune will dominate the headlines, Piastri’s supreme pole position performance and his faultless drive out in front should be a reminder of how high his performance bar has been all season. He now has some breathing room for good measure.
McLaren and engine supplier Mercedes both left Zandvoort unsure exactly what had caused the sudden retirement. Andrea Stella, the straight-talking-engineer-turned-McLaren-team-boss, hinted at the feeling he and the team had about its wider implications.
“Reliability has been a strong point at McLaren for a long time,” he said. “We have had today what looks like a technical reliability problem, which is always disappointing, but I would say that it is even more inconvenient because it affects a situation in which we as a team wanted to stay as neutral as possible in what is the drivers’ individual quest in the drivers’ championship. So it is not ideal.”
That aspect of Norris’ DNF will provide the main talking points going forward. McLaren has been very precise and very open about how it has tried to keep the playing field between its drivers as level as possible this season. There were some missteps in 2024 — most notably at Monza, host of F1’s next race in seven days’ time — but the team has grown into its role as the class leader this year and has done a very good job at ensuring transparency. Even June’s Canadian Grand Prix, where Norris clumsily drove into the back of Piastri, did not lead to the nuclear fallout many expected, showing how well the team has handled two young drivers fighting for a maiden championship.
For all the good work in ensuring things have been fair behind the scenes, though, this is a blot on the record, albeit an unintentional one. Unlike some of Norris’ high-profile mistakes earlier this year, this was a moment out of his control, one that might ultimately come to define whether he can call himself world champion by the end of the year.
Norris on the ropes
By the time he came to speak to the media, Norris was in a remarkably stoic mood.
“It wasn’t my fault, so there’s nothing I can really do,” he said. “Tough one. Of course it’s frustrating. It hurts a bit for sure in a championship point of view. It’s a lot of points to lose so quickly and so easily. There’s nothing I can control now, so I’ll just take it on the chin and move on.”
He later joked that he just wanted to go and eat a burger and go home. There had been some emotion immediately afterwards, with the Englishman slumping against one of the sand dunes the Zandvoort circuit is built around, hunching over with his head held low. It brought back memories of Lewis Hamilton walking away from his smoldering Mercedes at the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix, the decisive moment in his title fight with teammate Nico Rosberg that season.
It might well go down as the defining image of this season’s title battle. It will sting at McLaren if it is.
One particular feeling has grown at the team this year. It quickly became apparent in the early stages of the season that McLaren had taken a step forward from its 2024 constructors’ championship-winning car and was in a league of its own out in front.
A handful of Max Verstappen victories earlier in the year briefly gave hope of a multi-team fight, but since Miami in May, the idea of McLaren comfortably winning both championships has been set in stone. Multiple McLaren members of varying degrees of seniority have told ESPN similar over recent months: at the end of the year, they want to be able to stand with both drivers, one the new world champion, the other the defeated runner up, safe in the knowledge both were given an equal opportunity to win. While a reliability issue can happen at any point and on any car, it will be a bitter pill for the team to swallow should it be the decisive moment.
In Norris, the team at least knows it has a driver big enough to cope with it. One of the first signings Zak Brown ever made as McLaren CEO, Norris has thrived since his debut in 2019 and repeatedly signed deals when the team was not competitive, something he was criticized for at the time. The Brown vision he signed up for has come to fruition.
After driving into Piastri in Montreal, the way Norris immediately took the blame diffused what otherwise could have turned their internal battle on is head. He dealt with Sunday’s setback with a similar stoicism that some other drivers might not have had
“[When] we talk about Lando, he’s one of the most fair, balanced, in a way I would almost say trustworthy individual before being so as a driver,” Stella said.
He also insisted the team will continue to let its drivers race as fairly and openly going forward as it has all year. There will be no slanting focus to Norris to atone for any points lost, which is also a fair approach: there’s often a quid pro quo with these matters. While Norris lost a chunk of points outside his control on Sunday, Piastri would also likely point to seven that his teammate gained over him thanks to a penalty at the British Grand Prix. He might also point to the seven Norris gained on him at the Austrian Grand Prix, where Piastri felt McLaren’s strategy had focused on beating Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc at the expense of beating the other papaya car on track.
“When it comes to the team, what’s important is that the team keeps racing in the same way we have gone racing so far,” Stella said. “So staying as neutral as possible, facilitating the pursuit of their own aspirations for Lando and Oscar in a balanced way, in a fair way, in a sportsmanlike way, and that’s what we will continue to do. I don’t think there’s any change in the approach of the team that is triggered based on the fact that we have this situation inside.”
0:54
Smoke forces Lando Norris out of the Dutch Grand Prix
Lando Norris is forced to stop his McLaren on lap 65 after smoke from his engine.
While the dynamic of the title fight might have taken on a fresh feeling on Sunday, one thing has not: Piastri’s form. Norris’ DNF and the huge points swing it created will dominate the headlines, but the Australian driver has been performing at a title-worthy level for much of the season. The Dutch Grand Prix might well be one of his most impressive weekends to date: he stole pole position from Norris, who had looked strong through practice, and then was faultless out in front in the first of his race wins in which he led from start to finish — impressive in any race, but even more so in one featuring three different safety car periods and restarts.
Norris himself acknowledged this elephant in the room when discussing his overall championship changes.
“The only thing I can do is try to win every race,” Norris said. “That’s going to be difficult, but I’ll make sure I give it everything I can. I thought obviously this weekend was good. It wasn’t by very much and I didn’t lose out by much in quali, but I felt always pretty on top of things and a couple of little areas to improve on.
“The pace was very strong today. There are so many positives. It’s just close. I have a good teammate. He’s strong. He’s quick in every situation, every scenario. It’s hard to get things back on someone who’s just good in pretty much every situation.
“Today is a different situation. It’s just unlucky. It’s not my fault. Sometimes that’s just racing. It certainly hasn’t helped the Norris’ Dutch DNF makes the 2025 F1 title Piastri’s to lose race. 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.”
It remains to be seen whether Norris needs to face a further engine penalty after Sunday’s retirement. Regardless of whether he does, with McLaren considering things business as usual going forward, and given how his teammate’s form is showing no signs of slowing down, for the first time all year, the F1 championship feels like Piastri’s to lose.
