Renowned F1 personality thinks Lando Norris can “easily beat” Oscar Piastri in 2025

Formula 1 journalist Peter Windsor believes Lando Norris has the potential to “easily beat” his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri in the 2025 season.

Last year’s runner-up Norris won Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix from pole position, scoring an important triumph on his teammate’s home turf.

Both had wild moments as rain hit the Albert Park Circuit late in the race, but while Norris managed to keep his oversteering car under control and rejoin the track, Piastri spun off the track and was beached on the grass.

It took several minutes for the Australian to reverse his car and resume the race, which meant that he could only finish ninth on a day he should have stood up on the podium.

Norris and Piastri are expected to be the main contenders for the drivers’ championship this year, together with Red Bull’s four-time world champion Max Verstappen.

But Windsor feels it would be quite difficult Piastri to recover from the early setback and give the British driver a run for his money in the title fight.

“Oscar Piastri will be feeling sick as a dog I suspect because this was his moment and it's gone now,” he said on his YouTube channel.

“And Lando not only won the Australian Grand Prix but he has won a big initial battle, not even a skirmish, a big battle with Oscar Piastri, as to if there is going to be a world champion at McLaren, who is it gonna be.

“It's not only that he won the race, but because of the way that he won the race, his faultless driving apart from that one mistake, and the way he got the pole as well. And that is a lot for Piastri to take, and to try to react to, and come back ahead of Lando. Almost impossible now, I think.”

Windsor believes Norris and Piastri’s driving styles have gradually converged at McLaren, with the latter no longer using tighter lines on the apex of corners.

He thus believes Norris’ tendency to make fewer mistakes after a challenging 2024 season is giving him the edge over Piastri.

“We saw a clear indication of where Oscar Piastri is with his driving [in the early laps],” Windsor explained.

“They were very close, it was relatively easy for Oscar to pull up behind Lando Norris, because Lando was going as slowly as he wanted to go in order to stay in front. Obviously in the lead and that was Oscar's marker, so he can catch him just about everywhere.

“But he was doing so with wide entries, with late braking, with all the things that we saw from Oscar Piastri at the back end of last year.

“The news is that he hasn't gone back to his short corner, very compact way of driving that we saw early in his McLaren career.

“He is now effectively driving exactly the same way as Lando Norris, except that of course Lando is a little bit softer with his inputs and makes fewer mistakes as a result and he is massaging the car a little bit more.

“But in terms of the way they approached the corner, where they are putting the power down, pretty much spot on, identical now. 

He added: “So in this situation, if this continues for the year, no doubt that at all that Lando Norris is going to easily beat Oscar Piastri because he is going to make fewer mistakes and he is softer with his input all around.

“The only way Oscar was ever going to do anything with Lando would be if he can go back to being a real short corner driver and doing something different, particularly on the slower, medium-speed corners.”