Opinion

Who slept worst last night: Lando Norris

Norris retired late on in the Dutch Grand Prix with a mechanical fault, extending his deficit to championship leader Oscar Piastri to 34 points with nine rounds left

There he sat, forlorn and broken, among the dunes of Zandvoort. He peeled the knee pads from his legs, his gaze fixed on Oscar Piastri celebrating the Dutch Grand Prix of 2025. For this was the weekend that Lando Norris’ Formula 1 title chances became ever slimmer.

When his McLaren failed on lap 65 of 72, Ralf Schumacher immediately grasped the gravity on commentary for Sky Sports Germany: “This would be tragic if it decided the championship. Truly tragic.” And tragic it was: Norris’ deficit ballooned from nine to 34 points in one cruel instant. A deficit, yes, but not unprecedented. In 2012 Sebastian Vettel trailed Fernando Alonso by 44 points — and still rose to be world champion.

McLaren boss Andrea Stella had said only in Spa: “We, as a team, we will try and make sure that from a reliability point of view, from a team operation point of view, we are as good as possible, such that it will be the drivers deciding their own outcome in terms of competing for the drivers' world championship.”

On Sunday afternoon in Zandvoort, McLaren failed that vow. Or was it Mercedes, its power-unit partner, who failed? All the other Mercedes-powered teams had already stumbled over technical gremlins in 2025. Only McLaren had escaped. Until now. The oil leak that snuffed out Norris’ race may have been born in Brixworth rather than Woking. Yet, as Stella stressed, chassis and engine must be regarded as one team. No finger pointed. No blame assigned.

When Norris radioed that he saw smoke and smelled “something funny”, Stella was already rubbing his nose in quiet dread. “It doesn’t smell good,” Norris added, and by then, the command post knew: the oil pressure was vanishing, the end inevitable. A few hundred meters further, his engineers understood he would not see the chequered flag.

“Can you bring it back, mate?” asked race engineer Will Joseph. “No, no. It’s gone,” Norris replied, calm beyond reason. “Fuck. Sorry,” Joseph offered in return, before assuring him: “Mate, you were quick today. Really quick.”

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Andrea Stella, McLaren, Zak Brown, McLaren

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

And Norris, still in shock, showed no trace of bitterness. “Unlucky, boys,” he said. No accusations. No recriminations. A constructive mindset, Stella praised.

Compare that to Lewis Hamilton in Malaysia 2016, when his Mercedes engine erupted in flames, likely ending his title fight against Nico Rosberg. His anguished “Oh no, no!” over the radio was followed, Toto Wolff later recalled, by weeks of icy silence between driver and team.

Norris, instead, told TV crews he would simply have to try to win every race from here. He smiled - genuinely, not forced - as he posed for the McLaren victory photo, though his own second-place trophy was missing.

Yes, a YouTube poll on our sister platform Formel1.de had 79 percent of fans convinced by midnight that Norris’ title hopes were finished. Yes, many media outlets declared a decisive shift toward Piastri. And yet, there are reasons why Norris need not yet be doomed to sleepless nights.

Consider the arithmetic. First: If Norris were to win all 12 remaining races - three sprints among them - and Piastri finished second each time, Norris would make up not 34 but 66 points. A fantasy? Perhaps. But mathematically possible. There are still 249 points on the table. 34 no longer sounds insurmountable.

Second: In Melbourne and Monaco alone, Norris outscored Piastri by 33 points. Extreme outliers, perhaps, but evidence that such swings are not impossible. And after all, Norris had won three of the last five grands prix - his trajectory upward, Zandvoort weekend included, until fate intervened.

Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari celebrates on the podium

Photo by: Sutton Images

Third: History itself offers comfort. Vettel’s 44-point comeback in 2012 has already been cited. But more striking still: Kimi Raikkonen in 2007, who overcame a 26-point gap to Hamilton. Back then, only 10 points were awarded for victory. Adjusted for today’s system, Raikkonen’s feat would equal a 65-point comeback. And he had only seven races left to do it, and no sprints.

So yes, Stella may be right that Norris could yet return stronger. His poise in the aftermath showed character. The championship deserves, perhaps even demands, that he now show the same resilience on track, to keep the story alive. For what drama is greater than that of the underdog - the one already written off, who rises to prove everyone wrong?

True, when the cameras had gone and Norris sat down on Sunday night, he may have been fuming. He likely vented to father Adam. He likely did not sleep peacefully. And that, too, is human.

But make no mistake: This championship, run under McLaren’s curiously controversy-free approach, needs a story Netflix can market. And what better story than Norris, abandoned by fortune, mocked by fate, and yet still fighting, still dreaming?