The three key factors set to decide Norris and Piastri title fight

Separated by just 16 points after Oscar Piastri’s Belgian Grand Prix victory, Andrea Stella believes there will be three big factors that determine whether the Australian or Lando Norris wins the title.

And he’s determined to ensure that from the team’s side, there is nothing McLaren does that influences it either way.

McLaren title fight will come down to ‘accuracy, precision, quality’

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Piastri secured his sixth Grand Prix win of the F1 2025 championship as he put an end to Norris’ winning run as the team-mates recorded McLaren’s sixth 1-2 result of the season.

Norris started the Grand Prix from pole position in a rolling start after four laps were completed behind the Safety Car as Race Control waited for the conditions to be safe given the drivers’ struggles with visibility on the earlier formation lap.

The Briton suffered the same fate as Piastri had a day earlier in the Sprint as the slipstream at the Spa-Francorchamps worked against him. As Max Verstappen had done to Piastri in the Sprint by steaming passed him down the Kemmel Straight and into Les Combes, Piastri did the same to his team-mate.

From there, he didn’t look back.

The McLaren pairing went with different compounds when they pitted for slicks, with Piastri worried that his medium tyres weren’t going to last. They did, but he was also helped by three mistakes from Norris that cost the Briton every time he began to close in on Piastri’s rear wing.

As such instead of attacking the Australian driver with his better tyres in the final laps, Norris had to settle for second place, 3.4s down at the line. It cost him in the championship as Piastri extended his lead to 16 points.

Analysis: More on Oscar Piastri’s victory at the Belgian GP

👉 Revealed: The mistakes that cost Lando Norris victory in Belgium

👉 Belgian GP conclusions: Verstappen’s goodbye kiss, Hamilton’s uncomfortable truth, Piastri’s zone

Stella reckons mistakes will be one of the big factors in deciding which of the McLaren team-mates wins this year’s World title.

“There is very, very little between our two drivers, and this is because the two drivers are racing at a very, very high level,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com. “We are lucky at McLaren to have two drivers that deservedly are fighting for the World Championship.

“I think the difference will be made by the accuracy, the precision, the quality of the execution.

“We saw in Silverstone that an issue, a sporting issue for Oscar during the Safety Car restart, and the consequent penalty cost him the race.

“And here we saw that somehow related to the circuit characteristic, like you said before, like it would have always been very difficult for Lando to keep the position, starting first, at the same restart. At the same time, I think Lando didn’t help himself.

“So I think the execution is what is going to make the main difference.

“We as a team, we will try and make sure that from a reliability point of view, from team operation point of view, we are as good as possible such that you will be the drivers deciding their own outcome in terms of competing for the Drivers’ World Championship.”

While Norris made a few mistakes in the race, Piastri was flawless as he managed his tyres and controlled the pace.

Calling it a performance of “very, very, very high quality”, Stella says Piastri’s only slip-up was his final lap in Q3 on Saturday, but even that worked in his favour.

“Like I said before,” he continued “we have two drivers which to the standards that even myself in my career, I’ve been close to working with multiple World Champions, I think Lando and Oscar are operating at that level, at the level of deservedly being in contention for the Drivers’ World Championship

“I think this weekend, Oscar, if anything, the only inaccuracy was yesterday in qualifying, where his laps weren’t perfect. But at the same time, we have to say that after the Sprint, he said, ‘Yeah, I’m pole position after the Sprint quali, but maybe that’s not the right place to be in pole position’.

“And as a joke after the qualifying yesterday, he said that was not my best lap in Q3 but perhaps this is the best place not to have the best lap in Q3.

“So yeah, Oscar, even in the long run on medium tyres, I think he was able to control the degradation. And in fact, I think he scored his best lap, if I’m not wrong, on the second last. Meaning he was ultimately controlling his mirrors and the time to Lando. So overall, hats off to Oscar.

“Great drive by Lando as well. A P1/2 for McLaren which is particularly important, because this is a circuit where we struggled in the previous years, and it has a particular meaning, I think, from a performance and a technical point of view, that we are performing at this level in a circuit with these characteristics. So well done to the entire team.”

Read next: Did the FIA make the wrong decision delaying the Belgian Grand Prix?