Were it not already a sweltering sauna in Singapore, the increasing intensity of this season’s Formula One world championship would be enough to make all but the most stoic competitor wilt. Withstanding the pressure may yet prove the difference between McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri as the title battle ratchets up with every race.
Including this weekend’s meeting in Singapore at the Marina Bay circuit, seven grands prix remain and the championship is finely poised. Piastri leads his teammate by 25 points. Both are free to race each other and with Max Verstappen still a distant 69 in arrears, it is a head-to-head battle, with little to choose between them.
F1’s most experienced and successful drivers know this scenario all too well. In 2007, when Lewis Hamilton narrowly missed winning the championship in the final race at Brazil in his debut season, it taught him the unique challenge of a title tilt.
“I remember the buildup to those races at the end and the pressure was there,” he said. “That was not needed. If I knew then what I know now, I would have easily won that championship, I think. I have learned not to add pressure that’s unnecessary.”
Welcome then, Norris and Piastri, to the cauldron. The advantage thus far has swung between them. Norris has five wins to Piastri’s seven and the pair have barely been off the podium in a McLaren that has been the class of the field. Piastri has been more consistent, with his British rival struggling to adapt to a lack of feel for grip from the front axle. Nonetheless, they have dominated, the difference between them often only which could deliver flawlessly, across qualifying and the race.
In this regard Norris has been found wanting, small errors were costly in China, more so after a poor qualifying in Bahrain and worse still when losing the championship lead after crashing out in qualifying in Saudi Arabia. Then, worst of all, over-eager in Canada he hit his teammate and went out, an enormous blow.
Piastri, in only his third season in F1, has been more comfortable. For some time sliding off at the season opener in the wet in Melbourne was his only fault and one which was forgivable in the sudden rain. Later, the Australian was also caught out and passed by an opportunistic Verstappen at Imola, while his misjudgment and penalty for “erratic braking” under the safety car at Silverstone cost him a likely win.
However, these were minor hiccups against something of a debacle at the last round in Baku. In Azerbaijan, Piastri crashed out in qualifying leaving him ninth on the grid, only to follow it with a false start, the car entering anti-stall and dropping him to the back of the field.
Chasing places on the opening lap, he misjudged the grip and ended in the barriers, an uncharacteristic sequence of errors that he acknowledged he could ill afford in Singapore this week.
“Baku was quite a good reminder of how quickly everything can change,” he said. “There’s some lessons about how I can deal with that better and lessons on risk I guess is the best way to put it. There’s nothing revolutionary that needs to change or that I am going to change.”
Both drivers are, for all their ability, still honing their skills in F1, a path well trodden by some of their peers on the grid. The opening years of Hamilton’s career were exceptional, but he also made his fair share of errors. Piastri could take note of Bahrain in 2008, the year the seven-time champion took his first title but which was marked by other mistakes as he found himself in an intense fight with Felipe Massa.
On the grid in Manama he had failed to correctly set the launch control on his McLaren and it went into anti-stall, dropping him down the grid. Shortly afterwards, chasing places, he clipped the back of Fernando Alonso’s Renault and had to pit with a damaged front wing. He finished 13th after a race he described as “a disaster”.
Similarly Verstappen’s early career was marked by misjudgments as he learned his craft. After one costly crash in Monaco in 2018 then team principal Christian Horner publicly demanded his driver demonstrate more discipline.
Verstappen, too, took it on board, the waywardness all but gone when he began winning titles. “This has just been character-building,” he said at the time. “Throughout my life there have been periods of character-building and this was another step. Sometimes, it is not enjoyable but sometimes you need it.”
Norris and Piastri are not up with Hamilton and Verstappen yet but they are under the same pressure and learning the same lessons. As Niki Lauda noted, the first title is always the hardest. Closing this one out is the biggest challenge of their careers and will probably fall to the one who can best handle the heat.
