Lando Norris faces uphill battle for 2025 F1 title: must gain 4 points per GP to catch Oscar Piastri. Lando Norris trails teammate Oscar Piastri by 34 points after the Dutch GP.

Lando Norris faces uphill battle: British driver must gain four points per race to catch Piastri

Critical weekend for the 2025 championship

The 2025 Formula 1 World Championship is far from over, with nine races still remaining, including three Sprint events offering additional points. However, Lando Norris’s retirement at the Dutch Grand Prix has tilted the season significantly in favor of teammate Oscar Piastri, who is steadily closing in on becoming the first non-European F1 world champion since 1997.

Piastri’s victory at Zandvoort, combined with Lando Norris’s technical retirement, allowed the Australian to gain 25 points in a single race, extending his lead to 34 points. Mathematically, Norris now needs to recover an average of four points per race over the remaining rounds to remain in championship contention. Maintaining this pace could see him challenge for the title all the way to the season finale in Abu Dhabi, potentially winning by a margin of just two points.

Points average needed to close the gap

In theory, Lando Norris still controls his own destiny: if he consistently finishes ahead of his teammate in every remaining race, he could secure the championship. In practice, the head-to-head comparison between the two McLarens has been extremely close, with a perfectly balanced record of seven wins each in races where both drivers were classified.

Starting a streak of favorable results will not be easy for Norris. The reality is that, unless Oscar Piastri suffers a rare zero-point weekend, the championship battle appears heavily weighted in favor of the #81 car. Moreover, this 34-point deficit represents the largest gap one of the two teammates has had to overcome so far this season, just as the championship enters its final third.