Headline: Verstappen’s two-step puts Piastri on notice — and Norris isn’t laughing it off
Max Verstappen has kicked the championship door back open with the sort of blunt force only he can muster. Wins at Monza and Baku have carved 35 points out of Oscar Piastri’s cushion in two races, trimming the gap to 69. With 199 still on the table, that number is suddenly small enough to make the McLaren garage glance over its shoulder.
McLaren spent the summer break looking untouchable after a run of one-twos, then added another Piastri victory at Zandvoort when Lando Norris parked up with an engine gremlin and Verstappen scooped second. That day ballooned the Dutchman’s deficit to 104. Since then, it’s been a Red Bull reset: the No. 1 car back to basics, the driver back to the front.
Andrea Stella didn’t bother playing it down. “Very serious contender,” McLaren’s team boss said in Baku after Verstappen converted pole into a lights-to-flag statement, the same weekend Piastri’s race ended in the Turn 1 barriers. That’s the kind of swing you feel on a Monday.
Norris isn’t pretending it’s fine. He’s not panicking either. Asked in Singapore if Verstappen can still haul this title back, he went for the shrug that isn’t really a shrug. “There’s a chance — more than zero,” he said, before nodding to the obvious: if Red Bull’s recent upgrade really has put them back on McLaren’s level, they’ll be there every Sunday to collect on any orange mistakes.
Esteban Ocon echoed the paddock’s default setting around Verstappen. Dangerous, when there’s something to hunt. George Russell went further — “100 percent,” he grinned when pressed for a number, before clarifying the joke. Nobody in this sport is that naïve.
Strip away the banter and the picture is simple. McLaren still owns the high ground: Piastri leads the championship, Norris sits second, 25 points back from his teammate. Their car has been relentlessly quick since the opening flyaways, and when it hits its window the thing looks like it’s running downhill. But Ferrari’s surges have been intermittent, and Mercedes can’t seem to string a weekend together. The only constant irritation, as usual, is Verstappen.
That’s why the temperature shifted after Baku. The Verstappen-Norris dynamic is cordial and competitive, and the respect is real, but both know the math. At 69 points down, Verstappen needs more than clean weekends — he needs the orange cars to get tangled in their own shadow fight or trip over reliability again. It’s not a comfortable thought for a team chasing its first drivers’ title since 2008.
Norris, for his part, batted away the increasingly tedious question of whether he’s going to take the gloves off with Piastri now. “You ask me this every time,” he smiled. “Play the clip from last time.” When the follow-up shifted to whether McLaren would start leaning toward Piastri now that Verstappen’s looming, he shifted to deadpan. “Very concerned. Very worried. Scared, frankly… No.”
He did concede something meaningful, though. Early doors, Red Bull were right there in the fight. McLaren brought upgrades, turned the screw, and banked momentum. Then Red Bull found a response of their own and the balance of power evened up again. If that pattern holds, Singapore and the run-in become a test of execution more than raw pace. Who blinks first?
The swing factor is still Verstappen’s margin for error. There isn’t one. He’s chasing a fifth straight title — the stuff of rare air — and he’ll need to be perfect. But he’s also spent the past four seasons making perfection look routine. That’s what has McLaren’s engineers massaging setup sheets a little longer into the night.
So yes, it’s a stretch. But it’s not fantasy. Verstappen has seen a path; Piastri and Norris know they can slam the door shut with one more dominant weekend. The championship got interesting again — and nobody in papaya needed a reminder of who tends to crash the party when it does.
