Ralf Schumacher tips title pendulum to swing back Piastri’s way — if McLaren man unlocks comfort again
The Lando vs Oscar title saga isn’t done twisting yet. That’s Ralf Schumacher’s view as Formula 1 heads into its final three-race sprint, with Las Vegas kicking off the run-in to Abu Dhabi and a McLaren civil war deciding the 2025 championship.
Lando Norris prised back control in Mexico and then turned the screw, arriving in Vegas with a 24-point cushion over Oscar Piastri. Max Verstappen remains a mathematical factor, but at 49 points adrift of Norris with 83 still on the table, the Red Bull man needs more than a miracle and knows it.
The shape of this fight has been anything but linear. Norris drew first blood with a clinical win at the season-opener in Australia as Piastri’s costly off left him ninth. Piastri hit back hard, taking three wins by Saudi Arabia and building a 34-point lead after the Dutch Grand Prix, where Norris retired. Since then? The Australian has been searching for rhythm, rewriting parts of his driving to suit evolving set-up windows and, by his own admission, negotiating “other factors.”
That’s the context for Schumacher’s take that we shouldn’t declare the momentum battle over just yet.
“The dynamics can change again,” the six-time grand prix winner told Sky Deutschland’s Boxengasse podcast. “If [Piastri] feels super comfortable again and exploits his potential, he can certainly finish ahead of his teammate.”
There are two threads to Schumacher’s logic. One: Piastri’s personal ceiling is high enough to flip a weekend on its head if he unlocks the car underneath him. Two: McLaren’s dominance isn’t absolute, so traffic from elsewhere can—and likely will—get between the orange cars.
He’s right on the second point. McLaren’s last 1–2 dates back to Hungary in August, and both Red Bull and Mercedes have pinched wins since. When Norris and Piastri aren’t parked on the front row, the strategic picture scatters: pit windows narrow, safety cars become kingmakers, and first stoppers can get buried behind rival team leaders. If Piastri qualifies ahead, the odds of a Norris buffer vanish—and a Mercedes or Red Bull wedged in the gap could turn a six-point swing into 10 or 14 in a heartbeat.
Brazil was a messy case study, and one Piastri might quietly bank as a step forward despite the scoreline. He showed bite in the Sprint weekend’s only practice and carried decent race pace, but a Sprint crash set him back and a 10-second penalty in the grand prix torpedoed any late charge. Even so, he finished only 15 seconds behind Norris at the flag. Start a few rows further up and the narrative looks very different.
Schumacher saw something similar. “He wasn’t that much slower than Norris and started the weekend well,” he said. “Of course, the ten-second penalty from the restart incident didn’t help. If he had started a little further forward, the drama would have been a lot less.”
The German was equally keen to underline Piastri’s headspace through the wobble. “What Piastri is showing now is excellent. It shows that he continues to grow as a driver, even when conditions are challenging. A good driver is defined not only by talent, but also by experience and resilience.”
That resilience may have to do heavy lifting over the next eight days. On paper, Norris can kill the contest by finishing second in each of the remaining three grands prix, regardless of what Piastri does. But title runs rarely hold to neat arithmetic. One DNF for the championship leader—one rogue kerb, one wheelnut that won’t play ball—and a Piastri win flips the standings by a single point. Throw in a Sprint result and the edges sharpen further.
Andrea Stella isn’t sounding any alarm bells about the venues coming up, either. McLaren’s team principal has been clear that the calendar’s final trio shouldn’t trigger the set-up sensitivities that hurt Piastri at certain circuits in recent weeks. In other words, there’s a clean shot at executing.
It’s also worth remembering how wildly this season has swung already. Norris set the early tempo, Piastri then controlled the middle third, and Norris hit back just when it felt like the tide was running away from him. This has been less a march than a pendulum. And Las Vegas, with its peculiar grip profile and street-circuit randomness, is the perfect place for another shove.
If you’re looking for what might decide it, here’s a short list:
– Qualifying execution: Piastri can’t afford traffic; Norris can’t afford a compromised banker.
– Start lines: Both McLarens launch well; track position is currency on cold tarmac.
– Number two interference: A Mercedes or Red Bull wedged between the pair changes everything.
– Cool heads: Penalties have bitten once; they can bite again.
Norris still owns the percentages. But the margins in a title fight between teammates are fickle things, and Schumacher’s right: comfort begets confidence, confidence begets pace, and pace is the one lever that can still drag this championship back towards Oscar Piastri. Three weekends to find it. Three chances to make it hurt.
