Oscar Piastri looks at the standings and sees a McLaren lockout. Andrea Stella watches the same races and refuses to cross Max Verstappen off the list.
McLaren’s MCL39 has bulldozed the middle third of 2025, stringing together four straight one-twos that flipped the title narrative from “wide open” to “in-house duel.” Verstappen, the reigning four-time champion, briefly kept the flame lit with wins at Suzuka and Imola in the Red Bull RB21, but the math has cooled the hype. Before Hungary the Dutchman trailed Piastri by 81 points; that gap has since stretched to 97 with 10 rounds left.
Asked if the championship is now a two-horse race between himself and Lando Norris, Piastri didn’t dodge. “I suppose so,” he said, noting that recent weekends have consistently boiled down to the McLaren duo. He was quick to add the caveat every title leader reaches for: different tracks, different threats. Ferrari and Mercedes have flashed pace in patches, and Verstappen’s Red Bull is never a lost cause until it’s mathematically so. But the Australian’s focus is blunt. Win races. Grow the gap. Let the rest sort itself out.
Stella, though, is keeping the net wider. “I wouldn’t exclude Max, for instance, being in the game,” the McLaren team principal cautioned, a reminder that 97 points isn’t insurmountable if the form book flips even briefly. McLaren has earned the right to be bullish, but it’s not forgetting who it’s up against.
Inside the garage, the story is as intriguing as the points table. Stella revealed that early-season development shifted characteristics of the car in a way that pinched Norris’s natural driving style. Subsequent upgrades and setup divergence have since given both drivers a window to drive “in a natural way,” as Stella put it. The result is what we see on Sundays: two drivers operating at near-identical levels, trading purple sectors and forcing the team to manage a championship fight without stepping on its own toes.
That internal balance could decide everything. Norris carries the experience edge; Piastri carries a reputation for frighteningly fast adaptation—he’s made a habit of winning early in every category. McLaren’s job now is equal parts performance and psychology: keep both comfortable, keep the car evolving, and don’t feed the opposition an opening.
Verstappen? Ignore him at your peril. He’s still lurking, and Red Bull has a habit of turning one upgrade into a momentum swing. For now, the orange cars own the narrative. But as ever in F1, all it takes is one Sunday to change the feel of a season.
