The McLaren garage has the hush of a title fight, not a civil war—and that’s exactly why David Coulthard thinks 2025 looks oddly familiar.
He’s drawn the line straight back to 2021. Back then, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen went punch-for-punch until Abu Dhabi, both “driving like World Champions,” as Coulthard put it, even though only one would walk away with the crown. Swap silver and blue for papaya and you’ve got McLaren’s in-house duel: Oscar Piastri vs Lando Norris.
With 10 rounds left, this title race has narrowed to two cars in the same garage. Piastri holds the upper hand by nine points, the product of a relentlessly tidy campaign from a driver with a trophy-stuffed junior CV. Norris, the longer-serving McLaren man, has swung back hard with three wins in the last four grands prix, reminding everyone why the team backed him through the lean years.
“If it was half a World Championship, Oscar’s won,” Coulthard told F1’s official site, noting Piastri’s form before the McLarens tripped over each other in Canada. Norris, chasing Piastri for fourth that day, clipped the back of the sister car and found the wall, the only real blot on an otherwise impeccably managed rivalry.
That’s been the theme: needle without the grenades. There’ve been a few sharp intakes of breath—Turn 1 in Hungary springs to mind—but nothing like the feud that once split the Mercedes and Red Bull camps. “I think McLaren have handled it really well,” Coulthard said. “Both their drivers are on the tamer side of animal than the wilder side,” which, in a title run-in, is not a criticism.
The stakes are obvious, and immediate. Nobody knows what 2026 will bring. You take your swing when the window’s open. “You’ve got to seize the moment,” Coulthard added, praising how Piastri has stepped up—and how Norris has met him.
The wider picture only sharpens the point. McLaren has broken clear in both fights: Max Verstappen is the nearest non-McLaren in the Drivers’ standings but sits 97 points off the top, while Ferrari trail by 299 in the Constructors’. It’s McLaren’s championship to lose—and to manage.
Coulthard, who knows a thing or two about the awkward geometry of a two-driver title bid, also offered the inevitable warning: tension finds a way. He predicted a coming together and, sure enough, got one in Montreal. But so far, it’s been largely clean, hard racing of the highest level—2021 without the shrapnel.
The comparison holds in the most important way. This feels like a season where two drivers could reasonably call themselves champion-calibre. Only one will get the label. As the run to Abu Dhabi begins, McLaren’s task is simple and brutal: keep the peace, keep the pace, and let the best of two title-worthy seasons decide the rest.
