11/08/2025 06:30
Oscar Piastri believes getting it "all together" over an F1 weekend
will be the "key" factor in defeating Lando Norris in the F1
drivers' championship battle. With just 10 of the 24 rounds of the
current campaign still to go, the Australian finds himself in a
tight contest with his McLaren team-mate, whom he leads by just
nine points. Red Bull's Max Verstappen is now a distant third at 97
points adrift, leaving just the Woking-based squad's two drivers to
juke it out for the glory of a maiden F1 drivers' title. Much of
the intrigue of the fight between the pair is their differing
styles and strengths; Norris is generally accepted to be the
slightly quicker driver, but has shown himself to be error-prone
over the course of the season, whilst Piastri has seldom made
mistakes. Last year, when Norris was comfortably the more
competitive of the two, one of the most prominent disparities came
in qualifying, where the British driver led the 24-year-old 20 to 4
in the head-to-head comparison. However, the eight-time grand prix
winner made strides in that area over the winter and leads his
team-mate 8-6 (as well as 3-0 in sprint qualifying), in part due to
the 25-year-old's aforementioned mistakes. "I've been happy with
qualifying this year," Piastri told media, including RacingNews365
, when asked about his progress in that area. "Still not been
perfect, but it's certainly been a good improvement from last
year." More critical in Piastri's eyes will be weaving together
strong weekends that are not compromised by underperformance in one
particular aspect, or something going wrong. He does, however, feel
he is already piecing rounds together better than last term, when
he ended the campaign 82 points behind Norris. "I don't really feel
like there's one area that's lacking," Piastri explained. "I felt
the same last year; it's just that I never got it all together on
the same weekend very often. "This year, I felt much more like
that, and it's just going to be about trying to do that every
weekend to the end of the year. So that's going to be the key."
