Norris ‘owns, doesn’t own’ the title? An ‘academic’ debate says McLaren

Lando Norris may be leading Oscar Piastri by 24 points in the title race, but Andrea Stella is adamant the debate over whether he “owns, doesn’t own” the title is academic.

This year’s championship, which is still on course for a McLaren 1-2 barring a late surge from Max Verstappen, has seen momentum swing between the Woking team’s drivers.

Does Lando Norris ‘own’ the F1 2025 World title?

While Norris led for the first four races, claiming an early advantage when he won in Australia while an off in the wet left Piastri down in ninth place, the lead changed hands in Saudi Arabia where Piastri won his third of seven grands prix.

The McLaren teammates remained neck-and-neck until the Dutch Grand Prix when an engine failure cost Norris second place while Piastri took the win and a 34-point lead. The Aussie, it could be said, was in the pound seat.

However, a bad run of form without a top-three result from Azerbaijan to Brazil cost him dearly, especially at a time when Norris not only regained his early-season momentum but put in one of the season’s most dominant performances in a grand prix weekend with two pole positions and two wins in Brazil’s Sprint weekend.

Norris, having regained the lead in Mexico City by a single point, surged 24 points ahead. There are, however, three race weekends remaining with a maximum of 83 points still in play.

Lando Norris v Oscar Piastri: McLaren 2025 head-to-head scores

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Asked to assess the championship race, Stella insists one cannot say if this is Norris’ title, or not.

“For me, the only way I look at the classification is to go one race at a time and make sure that we maximise the points we score,” Stella told the media in Brazil.

“Honestly, while it could be a good exercise to talk about Formula 1, which is fair, to look at the combination is now a championship that Lando owns, doesn’t own. It’s so academic.

“From a driver’s point of view, team point of view, we just have to make sure that we stay focused on ourselves and focus on executing weekends like Lando has executed in Brazil or in Mexico.

“And for instance, with Oscar, make sure that our opportunities are capitalised.

“Honestly, when it comes to the points, we will take a look at the end of Vegas and we will see where we are. And likewise, after Qatar and Abu Dhabi.”

Vegas could be a deciding factor in the title race as a victory for Norris, and a P6 for Verstappen, would eliminate the only non-Red Bull driver from the championship race.

Verstappen trails Norris by 49 points, which means if he doesn’t finish sixth or higher, even if he won the final races of the season, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, he’d still lose the title on a countback of second-place finishes.

Although McLaren was sixth and seventh last year in Sin City, Stella is convinced the team will have a better weekend this year as they learned lessons from 2024.

“Vegas, if anything, has proven to be a challenge for McLaren overall,” Stella said. “Last year, we were not competitive. We needed to learn something, if anything, during the race, just to try and make some changes to see if we could stop the graining.

“This year, the tyres, they do grain much less than last year, so it could be a slightly different Vegas from this point of view. It will be interesting to see.”

But, he added: “I think for Lando and Oscar, there’s no problem in terms of track layout coming in the next races.

“If anything, we need to make sure that from a McLaren point of view, we are in condition to extract the full performance that is available in the car, like we have been able to do it here in Mexico. We have some reservations that at a few of the previous races, we have actually been able to do.”

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