Title statement Piastri had coming; why ruthless step could spark final gambles — F1 Talking Pts
This is the weekend Lando Norris has been promising to deliver all season.
Fastest in every session he entered and victorious over his teammate in the race, Norris looked every bit the title contender he was expected to be for arguably the first time this season.
Only in Monaco, at the sport’s most unusual circuit, did he look similarly comprehensively in control.
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And coming just two weeks after his disastrous crash in the Canadian Grand Prix, Norris can claim to have banished some of his biggest demons just days before his home race in Silverstone.
NORRIS GETS THE JOB DONE
If Norris’s championship hopes are to turn to his benefit this season, the Austrian Grand Prix might have been the pivotal race.
It’s not simply what he achieved but rather how he achieved it.
Unlike the false dawn of Monaco, where he won from pole in a race that rarely features any real overtaking, at the Red Bull Ring he had to execute. There was barely a moment at which he wasn’t under pressure, at which even a small mistake might have undone his entire weekend.
Norris rose to the challenge tremendously to make a statement worth more than just the seven points he clawed back on Piastri in the championship lead.
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“It was a tough race, pushing the whole way through,” Norris said. “Tricky, hot, tiring, but the perfect result for us as a team.
“We had a great battle, that’s for sure. It was a lot of fun — for me a lot of stress, but a lot of fun. A nice battle, so well done to Oscar. Hopefully it was a nice one for everyone to watch, but inside the car it was tough.
“He was so quick, so it was good fun.
“A one-two is exactly what we want, and we did it again, so I’m very happy.”
It was particularly meaningful for victory to have been so hard won ahead of his title-leading teammate. Piastri has had the run of things pretty much all season in both qualifying and race conditions, and in the race again the Australian looked like the faster driver.
It was a battle featuring several pivotal moments, but the biggest came in the first stint, which Piastri spent peppering Norris with attacks.
On lap 11 Piastri hauled himself ahead of Norris into turn 3, benefiting partly from his teammate running wide exiting the final corner.
But Norris, having learnt from his fruitless attacks on Max Verstappen here a year earlier, played a smarter game to retain DRS on the straight down to turn 4, where he took the lead back.
He was never headed again, deftly fending off Piastri’s advances before strategy separated them until the end of the grand prix.
Fastest in the two practice sessions in which he participated. Fastest in all qualifying segments. Winner of the race ahead of his teammate.
Not every weekend will be so good, but this was a reminder that Norris still has the potential to be the title contender he was tipped to be at the start of the season.
Piastri, meanwhile, might rue his shot selection during that opening stint. He may also regret choosing to build a tyre offset with a later first stop rather than immediately covering to keep himself in touch.
But one of Piastri’s great strengths is his perspective. The Red Bull Ring is a Norris fortress, and Norris was comfortably the quicker McLaren up until the race.
Walking away with only seven points lost is a reasonable result.
‘VERY PROUD’ MCLAREN BACKS LET-THEM-RACE APPROACH
Norris and Piastri’s duel made the Austrian Grand Prix and engrossing race, even if strategy resulted in a ceasefire in the middle stint.
For that we have McLaren to thank.
It would have been so easy for the team to suspend racing between its drivers after their late crash at the Canadian Grand Prix. It would have been easy again to tell Piastri to cool his jets given the risk of soaring track temperatures to his car — and he was warned at one stage about an overheating gearbox while battling Norris.
Teams in dominant positions like McLaren’s have also reached quickly for all sorts of rules to minimise the chance of a clumsy accident, whether that be deciding the winner at the first corner or by some other in-race marker.
But after weeks of insisting that it wanted to give both its drivers an equal chance to win races and the title, McLaren once again proved true to its word.
“It was intense racing, but that’s what we are here for,” team principal Andrea Stella told Sky Sports. “We are very happy, very proud, of how they handled the situation.”
Even Piastri’s misjudged move into turn 4 that had him locking up and coming perilously close to clattering into Norris wasn’t enough for the pit wall to rein him in.
“We needed to give Oscar a bit of advice in terms of the manoeuvre in corner 4, which he actually acknowledged, and I’m once again proud of him for how he said straight after the chequered flag that he was sorry for that manoeuvre, that he went a little too far.
“They are obviously stressful moments, but we trust [them]. We rely on Oscar and Lando.
“For us it was clear that the guys needed to have the opportunity to win the race — both — as long as they do it in the way they did it today, so it is great spectacle for Formula 1.
“We look forward to more races like this, even if it may give us some nervousness on the pit wall.”
With McLaren looking increasingly likely to walk to both championships, at least we can be sure that Piastri and Norris will be allowed to light their own fireworks in the battle for the drivers title.
MCLAREN TAKES ANOTHER STEP
McLaren’s domination in Austria came at a poignant time for the brand.
Spielberg isn’t only a good venue for Norris, but it also holds special significant for the team.
“This is the place where two years ago in 2023 pretty much the new trajectory of McLaren started,” Stella said, referring to the first of several major upgrade packages that powered Norris to fourth in that year’s race. “From then we have upgraded the car constantly.
“If I take the opportunity to thank the team for the upgrade we took here, then let me say an even bigger thankyou for what the team have been able to do in these 2.5 years in which we have turned things around.
“We have taken McLaren to lead both championships in 2025. Hopefully we are able to take this to the end of the season.”
Having played down expectations about its Austria upgrade this year, Stella enthused about the new parts after the race, once it was clear that the update had at least consolidated the car’s position at the head of the field.
“All the men and women at McLaren … not only have they been able to make a very fast car for the 2025 season, but we have been able to upgrade this car. Here we had new front wings, new front suspension, new front brake ducts. There’s been quite a lot of work, so thank you to the team.”
That’s important beyond the meaning of this one event for the team.
McLaren wasn’t the only constructor to bring new parts to the weekend.
Ferrari brought the first part of a two-part major upgrade, and though Charles Leclerc’s podium kept optimism alive, there was no point during the race at which the Ferrari looked like it had the pace to race with either McLaren. It finished 20 seconds behind Norris.
Red Bull Racing’s own upgrades left Verstappen seventh and Yuki Tsunoda 18th on the grid. Verstappen’s race lasted only three corners before being crashed out, while Tsunoda languished at the back of the pack with a hefty penalty for hitting Franco Colapinto in a battle for the lower places on the classification sheet.
Mercedes brought some circuit-specific new bits to the high-altitude circuit, but George Russell was more than a minute off the pace by the flag, his car suffering from its same-old temperature problems.
These are among the last rolls of the dice for the frontrunners to catch McLaren before they turn their attention to 2026.
But McLaren is the only one among them to take a confident step forward — just as it has done since 2023.
RED BULL RACING SUFFERS WORST DAY IN FOUR YEARS
You have to cast your mind back a long, long way to find Red Bull Racing’s last non-scoring finish — all the way back to the 2021 British Grand Prix, after Verstappen crashed out of the race in a collision with Lewis Hamilton and then Sergio Pérez finished a lap down in 16th.
How it achieved a repeat of that feat — and at the home race of the Red Bull brand — says much about the state of the team.
Verstappen was punted out of the race on the first lap by an errant Andrea Kimi Antonelli at turn 3. The Dutchman was unlucky, having done nothing wrong and having not even seen the Mercedes driver coming from a long, long way back.
Fortunately Red Bull Racing has a second car on track to salvage points.
Except that’s not what Yuki Tsunoda managed.
Tsunoda’s struggles adapting to the Red Bull Racing car continued in Austria. He was knocked out of qualifying 16th and was scrappy in the race, battling Lance Stroll and then picking up a 10-second penalty for crashing into Franco Colapinto.
Here was a visceral example of Red Bull Racing’s problems: if it doesn’t have Verstappen, it has no-one.
We know Tsunoda is a fast and reliable performer. He was showing us not just last year but earlier this year.
The team’s problem is so clearly a car that has been developed into an unusable corner in pursuit of extracting the maximum from Verstappen’s driving style.
The contract was heightened considerably by Liam Lawson finishing a career-best sixth after a very strong one-stop race spent keeping Fernando Alonso behind him.
He was the only scoring Red Bull-backed driver in the field, eclipsing teammate Isack Hadjar and adding yet another uncomfortable twist to the entire driver line-up situation.
“It’s been a very tough year,” he said. “It’s been very emotional and very, very tough to just secure a result.
“To do that today is very, very cool. It’s obviously [only] one good weekend, but I feel like the speed’s been really, really good recently.
“In practice at the last few races I felt really good and then it hasn’t converted in quali. It was nice to do that”
Red Bull Racing is down to fourth in the constructors championship. The team is 47 points behind next-best Mercedes and a massive 255 points off McLaren in the lead.
Even if those margins were surmountable, it doesn’t seem like the team knows how to do it anymore.
BORTOLETO SCORES FIRST POINTS IN MIDFIELD SHAKE-UP
There’s something remarkable happening in the midfield.
After starting the season as what appeared to be the nailed-on last-placed team, Sauber is mounting a resurgence that could threaten the make-up of the midfield.
Sauber walked away from Austria with another six points for its tally. It’s retained ninth in the standings, but it’s now 15 points clear of last-placed Alpine and only 29 behind fifth-placed Williams after the British team failed to score on a day to forget, with both cars retiring from the race.
Sauber’s recent upgrades have transformed its car into a competitive midfielder capable of regular points, but that’s only part of the story.
The other is the maturation of rookie driver Gabriel Bortoleto, who scored his first points on Sunday.
Bortoleto was superb this weekend, making his first Q3 appearance, keeping out of trouble on the first lap and perfectly executing his strategy to finish the race in eighth, where he started.
“I’m glad to be in the points for the first time,” he told Sky Sports. “I would say it’s just getting a bit more experience. It’s a natural process of Formula 1.
“In F1 I feel like I’m doing more or less the same as in F2, growing through the season, learning a lot of things — and obviously there are so many things still to improve from my side. I feel like there’s a long journey ahead of me.”
Bortoleto’s score is important because of the value of getting two drivers into the top 1 when the opportunity arises.
With so many frontrunners out of position and with both Williams drivers retiring from the race, there was a huge opportunity for a midfield team to score solid points by getting both drivers into the top 10.
Sauber managed just that, its first double points finish since the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix and only its third in the last five years.
Suddenly Audi doesn’t look like it’ll be starting from such a low base next year after all.