Oscar Piastri: Current F1 title lead ‘not a comfortable’ gap

Formula 1 championship leader Oscar Piastri thinks his 34-point lead on McLaren team-mate Lando Norris is “not a comfortable” gap after his title rival retired from the Dutch Grand Prix.

Piastri and Norris looked set to hand McLaren another comfortable 1-2 in Zandvoort until Norris retired with undiagnosed mechanical issues with seven laps remaining.

Norris’ misfortune significantly swung the title fight in Piastri’s way: he leads by 34 points instead of the projected gap of 16. This means Norris will have to outscore his team-mate by an average of almost four points at each of the last nine rounds in 2025.

With McLaren’s dominance still at its peak, it will be tough for Norris to claw back big chunks of points as long as the squad keeps reeling off 1-2s and Piastri is spared of bad luck of his own.

But the Australian doesn’t feel his gap is big enough yet to feel comfortable heading into the title run-in.

“No, I don’t think so. There’s still a long way to go,” he said. “I need to keep pushing and trying to win races still. I wouldn’t say it’s a very comfortable margin. As we saw today, it can change with one DNF very, very quickly. So this far out from the end of the year, it’s not a comfortable gap.”

Piastri made the difference by finding just enough laptime in Saturday’s Q3 to deny Norris pole by 0.012s, and said he was satisfied with how he was able to keep finding marginal gains throughout Saturday.

“Qualifying was the key this weekend,” he added. “Through the free practice sessions, it was looking like a difficult Zandvoort again, but we chipped away, tried to find time, tweaked the car here and there.

“I just tried to really improve how I was driving because, let’s be honest, it’s pretty hard to complain about the car we’ve got. So I just tried to chip away at that and it came good when it mattered.

“And through the race today, I felt like I had good pace as well and used that when I needed to, so I’m massively proud of firstly myself, but also the whole team around me in turning it around from 12 months ago.”

He added: “It was a really good race. Obviously, the restarts are always tough moments to get right, but I felt in control the whole time. Obviously, the ending was unfortunate for Lando and the team to not have a one-two when I think we really deserved it.

“But from my side, I’m very proud of the week we put together, being quick when it mattered.”

Photos from Dutch GP – Race