Very few people know what it's like to be in the thick of a Formula 1 title battle, not least one involving your team-mate or a generational talent.
But Damon Hill, who beat his Williams team-mate Jacques Villeneuve to the 1996 crown and went toe-to-toe for the title with Michael Schumacher in 1994, certainly knows a thing or two about the weight of a championship battle.
On The Race's brand new podcast Stay On Track with Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert, Hill, along with his long-time racing rival turned friend turned podcast co-host Johnny Herbert, gave his take on the increasingly tense title fight between McLaren team-mates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, as well as Max Verstappen's charging Red Bull.
You can listen to the very first episode of Stay On Track with Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert right now here, find it on your preferred podcast platform, or watch it on YouTube. If you want to listen to the episode ad-free, join The Race Members' Club.
They speak after Piastri's championship lead has been whittled down to nothing and lost to team-mate Norris, by a single point ahead of the final four races.
"It's fantastic. It's exciting, but it gets to you, there's no doubt about it. There's the weight and I wonder whether that's the Oscar problem," Hill said on the first episode of Stay On Track.
"There's this weight, you cannot get to the end. You've got to lead. You wish they could call it now…if they could stop the championship [pre-Mexico] and say, and 'now we have to declare a winner because we can't do the last five races'.
"As we're talking now, he's not in the lead, but for a long time, Oscar was holding this weight.
"They all talk about there's no pressure. Do you remember Nigel Mansell [in 1992], it was a foregone conclusion that he was going to become a world champion with the car he had, the Williams FW14B, the active car.
"It was way better than anyone else's, and he was winning it by miles, and everyone kept on saying to Nigel, 'you're going to win the championship'. He deferred it, he kicked it into the long grass every time he was asked the question. He wouldn't go there. He wouldn't discuss it. And I think mentally you have to do that.
"It's like in a race, it's no good starting to think about the chequered flag when you're 10 laps from the end. Because the moment you do that, you want it to be finished, but you're not there yet. You've got to get to the [end of the] 10 laps, and you mustn't get out of that state of mind.
"In my championship year, I was in a bubble. I had no idea what else was happening in the world.
"There are all sorts of approaches to it. I'm sure that [Ayrton] Senna's approach or [Alain] Prost's approach and Mansell's approach were slightly different, but I do think they all understand the importance of this thing."
The shock of a title fight
Hill also thinks there's a shock factor for Norris and Piastri to deal with.
"I think this has been a bit of a surprise for people like Oscar and Lando because suddenly their car last year was competitive," Hill added.
"[McLaren] suddenly found something. And then they started this year with a big advantage. And I think they started off the season thinking, 'this is great, isn't it? We've got a great car. We're going to win all the races. It's wonderful'.
"It virtually was true. But then the penny dropped that 'one of us is going to be world champion. And I don't want it to be you'.
"If I was Oscar, I'd have been thinking, 'this is all going brilliantly, I'm leading the championship. All I have to do is keep Lando in his box, and I can come second. I've still got some points [lead] I can pay out, it's like with a fishing line, you can just let it go a bit, but as long as it doesn't get to the end of the reel, before you get to the end of the championship.
"He had the luxury of a points advantage. And then suddenly, he drops the ball. Now, I remember [Piastri's manager] Mark Webber saying, this guy had not even so much as done a corner on a car before. And then he gets to Baku, and he does two tubs. The wheels fell off.
"The only explanation you can have for that is that somehow the mindset has changed from being someone who just was looking at each race and seeing it as an individual goal, which is actually the right way to go about it. In other words, if you just take each race at a time, then what will be will be."
Hill's been impressed with the way Piastri has handled the media attention, though, saying, "He's open, but also, he doesn't say too much and he doesn't get riled by questions.
"There were some questions he's been getting recently like 'Do you think you're losing it?' Can you imagine how you would feel if someone is saying that?
"And he seems to have coped with that very well, that pressure. But something happened and I think he's tripped over this problem with the realisation that you could become world champion and you get that maybe a rush of blood to the head or that over excitement."
Herbert: Norris has dropped his baggage
Three-time F1 race winner Herbert, having been team-mates with greats including Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen, knows exactly how tough intra-team competition can be.
He's impressed with the mentality shift Norris has undergone this year.
"A lot of people have been critical of Lando, I was probably one of those as well, because he's very honest," Herbert said.
"Sometimes honesty is not something you want to get out there to the media because your team-mate is going to hear about it. And sometimes your team-mate can use that as a very powerful weapon against you.
"Lando, I think as time has gone by, especially this year, he has realised that he needs to completely use all the energies that he's got and not waste those energies on that honesty that comes out because I think that becomes a very negative thing for you.
"Now, I think he's able to absorb a lot of what's going on in the bubble of the engineer's room, the bubble of the Formula 1 paddock and the bubble of the social media world that's going on.
"So I think capacity is something that he's now learning, and understanding that 'I've got to have capacity to absorb new things that will come into my life'. Maybe they're going to be away from the circuit, but there's going to be a lot of things that are going to be in the circuit at the same time.
"He's able to get rid of some of that baggage that you don't need and that just gives you more space. And what does that give you? More freedom. And when it gives you more freedom, you're more relaxed.
"It was interesting in Mexico, that was the best start he's ever done. Very noticeable. And then it was noticeable saying, 'I was so relaxed this weekend'. And there's the proof in the pudding that you have that ability to have that space to absorb everything that's going on around you.
"He had so much time, actually, and that allowed him to get off that line so quickly. So he's moved probably into the next level that he needs to be where I think Oscar was probably slightly ahead at the beginning of the year, but I think it's just what I think he's just gone ahead of Oscar at this present time."
You can watch the very first episode of Stay On Track with Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert below:
Stay On Track with Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert is a brand-new monthly podcast from The Race Media, in partnership with The Athletic.
