Oscar Piastri vs Lando Norris: The race for the F1 title which is even more dramatic than Drive to Survive

In real-time, you can’t just fast-forward to the end to find out who’s won without going through the rollercoaster of emotions that come with following the journey.

For Australia’s new generation of Formula One fans, who were initially hooked into the sport by Netflix’s popular Drive to Survive series, that’s been torture.

Because everyone’s now so invested in Oscar Piastri’s bid to win the world championship, they’re discovering the real thing is far more dramatic and nerve-racking than the reality television version ever was.

That’s partly why so many fans, newcomers and experts alike, are all tying themselves in knots trying to predict what’s going to happen in the remainder of the season, even though it’s a futile exercise.

The championship is on a knife’s edge but there’s no way to skip to the finish. The title won’t be decided for months and it’s going to be a white-knuckle ride with plenty of twists and turns. As it should be.

The only thing everyone does understand is that after two-thirds of the 24-round season, Piastri is in the box seat, leading his McLaren teammate Lando Norris in the standings by 31 points with the defending four-time world champion Max Verstappen, a further 63 points adrift.

With 224 points still up for grabs from the remaining eight rounds, there is still a long way to go so the engravers aren’t chiselling anyone’s name on the trophy just yet.

As the current leader, the odds are in Piastri’s favour but nothing is guaranteed because F1 is such a wildly unpredictable sport that rarely follows a smooth pattern because there are so many variables.

With competitors driving at speeds of up to 370km/h, every split second decision can have a massive impact.

While each driver is capable of pulling off breathtaking overtakes, they are also prone to making mistakes that can lead to high-speed crashes or unwanted penalties from the race stewards.

Teams make errors too, from choosing the wrong tyres or the wrong tactics, or botching up pit stops. Mechanical problems can also occur, often with cars breaking down without any warning.

Then there’s the fickleness of Mother Nature. When it rains, and it does often on race weekends, circuits become so slippery that even the best drivers need a slice to stay on the road.

As the 2025 season has already shown time and time again, anything can happen and often does in F1.

While tempting, anyone trying to second-guess what’s going to happen in the remaining races is living in fool’s paradise and will only send you mad.

The best thing Australians can do is try and stay patient and strap themselves in for the ride while trusting in Piastri to get the job done.

All the signs indicate he won’t buckle under pressure. He might only be 24 but’s already won F3 and F2 championships and has a rare ability to stay composed.

It was telling after last week’s Italian Grand Prix, when Piastri was told to hand second place back to Norris after a slow pit stop, that the most unflustered person on track was Piastri.

What sets F1 drivers apart is their ability to calculate things quicker than most people so while everyone else was losing it over the team orders, Piastri had already moved on, knowing there’s bigger fish to fry. His supporters should take note.

While Verstappen still has a mathematical chance of retaining the title, the reality is he’s got next to no hope. Trailing Piastri by 94 points with eight races to go, he’d need to outscore the Australian by an average of 12 points per race to overhaul him.

Under the scoring system that’s been in place since 2010, each race winner receives 25 points, with second place getting 18, third receiving 15 and fourth position 12, and so on through to 10th place.

During that time, no-one has ever overturned a deficit of more than 24 points behind to win the title so history is on Piastri’s side.

Even if Verstappen won all of the eight remaining races, Piastri would remain in front just by finishing regularly on the podium, which he’s managed to do all season. Of the 16 races so far, Piastri has finished in the top three on all but two occasions.

Barring an unprecedented turnaround, the championship is looming as a two-way shootout between Piastri and Norris.

The McLaren cars are clearly the fastest and most reliable on the grid. The team is on course to retain the constructors’ championship at the next race in Azerbaijan, leaving the pair to fight out the individual honour.

Because their cars are virtually identical in terms of performance, the gaps between them have been minuscule, both in qualifying and in race trim. Usually, they are separated by just hundreds or even thousands of a second.

In theory, that will benefit Piastri in the run home because it means that even when Norris beats him in races, he won’t make big inroads into his lead.

Last week in Italy, Norris gained just three points on Piastri. At that pedestrian rate, he won’t catch him in eight rounds.

The gap between finishing first and second is seven points so Norris does at least hold his destiny in his own hands. If he won the last eight races he’d be guaranteed to be crowned champion, though that would require a monumental turnaround in form.

Now in his seventh season as an F1 driver, Norris has won just nine Grands Prix in his entire career and never more than two in a row, while his younger rival is accelerating at a much faster rate.

Piastri has also won nine Grands Prix, but from less than half as many race starts as Norris. And he’s been more consistent so far in 2025. Earlier this year, he strung together three wins on the trot as well as eight consecutive podiums.

If the pair finish all of the remaining eight races close to each other, Piastri would only need to finish in front in possibly two or three of their head-to-head clashes to claim the title whereas the Englishman would likely need to come out on top at least six times.

Even then, nothing is assured because Verstappen is lurking as the wildcard that could significantly help Piastri. Despite struggling in his Red Bull compared to previous seasons, Verstappen has still managed three race wins this season as well as claiming five pole positions.

In Monza last weekend, the Dutchman destroyed the field to win by more than 19 seconds, by far the biggest winning margin by anyone this year. Based on that performance, it’s highly likely Verstappen will win again this season, further reducing Norris’ chances of making big inroads into Piastri’s lead.

But the biggest pothole is something no-one can accurately foresee.

With little between the McLaren drivers and their cars, one of the grim realities of motorsport is that the biggest prizes are sometimes decided by the number of points lost rather than the number gained.

While Piastri has successfully banked points from every race this season, Norris has twice come away empty-handed, once of his own fault when he crashed, then again when his engine blew up.

In a season of unknowns, that’s the reason right there why it’s worth being driven around the bend to see how it all unfolds.