Five key moments that cost Lando Norris F1 championship lead
Five key moments have led to Lando Norris losing his grip at the top of the F1 world championship.
When Lando Norris took the chequered flag first to win the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, he had lived up to his billing as the favourite for the 2025 F1 world title.
Things couldn’t have got off to a better start. Norris converted pole position into a victory with an outstanding drive that put him top of the world championship standings, and he appeared to have everything going his way.
Fast-forward four races later and things have dramatically changed, with the 25-year-old Briton having been usurped by his McLaren teammate and battling confidence issues in his car.
Norris has slipped to second in the championship table and fallen 10 points adrift of Oscar Piastri, who has momentum on his side having made a convincing case to be McLaren’s lead driver.
What’s more, Norris is only three points clear of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and looks like a driver who is starting to feel the pressure and weight of expectation on his shoulders.
It is still only early days in the 2025 F1 title race, but a combination of bad luck and driver mistakes have already proven to be major blows for Norris.
Here are the key moments that have cost him the lead in the world championship…
Poor China sprint
After his flying start to the season with maximum points in Melbourne, things did not go so smoothly in China.
Piastri qualified third for the sprint race while Norris appeared to be on target for pole until a mistake forced him to abort his lap and left him only sixth on the grid.
Norris went on to endure a difficult race and could only salvage a point in the end as he finished eighth. Piastri claimed second, while Verstappen took third, with both outscoring Norris in the process.
Chinese GP brake issues
Another mistake on a qualifying lap cost Norris and enabled George Russell to sneak his Mercedes between the two McLarens as Piastri took pole for the main grand prix.
Norris got ahead of Russell in the race to complete a dominant 1-2 for McLaren but felt “lucky” to finish after encountering a brake issue in the closing stages.
Norris was just three seconds behind Piastri at the chequered flag and only 1.3s clear of Russell as he nursed his McLaren home. He potentially missed out on a chance to put his teammate under pressure when his brake pedal went “long” and dropped 13 points to Piastri over the course of the weekend.
Poor qualifying and false start in Bahrain
Norris got the better of Piastri in Japan as McLaren were forced to settle with P2 and P3 behind Verstappen, but the pendulum of momentum swung once again in Bahrain.
Norris was left deflated and frustrated after struggling to sixth in qualifying on a day Piastri claimed another pole. He seemed to make amends immediately by climbing to third with a brilliant start in the race only to be hit with a five-second time penalty for being ahead of his grid slot.
Norris ultimately recovered to third but his slow progress getting past the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc hurt him, while he could not find a way past Russell’s Mercedes despite having the quicker car in an uncharacteristically scrappy performance.
With the car at his disposal, Norris knew he really should have finished at least second behind Piastri.
Qualifying shunt in Jeddah
The biggest mistake of Norris’s campaign so far came in qualifying in Jeddah.
Norris arrived in Saudi Arabia with a three-point lead over Piastri but gave himself a huge task after losing control of his McLaren and smashing into the barriers, leaving him only 10th on the grid.
A brilliant lap from Verstappen saw him pip Piastri to pole by just 0.010s.
Held up behind Lewis Hamilton
Norris would go on to turn in a strong recovery effort to finish fourth by using an off-set tyre strategy, but with Piastri beating Verstappen to the win, he would relinquish the world championship lead for the first time.
Norris took a long time to work out how to overtake Hamilton’s Ferrari and lost three important laps in the process, which may well have prevented him from challenging for a podium.
He caught the other Ferrari of Leclerc in the closing stages but his medium tyres were past their best and he fell just over a second adrift at the end as more points went begging.
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