Lando Norris had the weekend of his dreams at the Brazilian Grand Prix, taking maximum points after winning both the sprint and main races alongside both his 2025 Formula 1 title rivals having difficult weekends.
While Max Verstappen was able to recover something from this weekend, charging from the pitlane to third, Oscar Piastri lost a further 23 points to team-mate Norris, whom he led in the championship only two races ago.
Norris is now nearly a full race win's worth of points ahead of Piastri - the gap is 24 points - so can he now relax? And what are the consequences for the rest of the season?
Mark Hughes, Jon Noble, and Edd Straw debated just that on The Race F1 Podcast.
Has Norris peaked at the perfect moment?
"It looks that way, doesn't it?" said Hughes. "This season has had so many ups and downs between the three title contenders that you're, even at this late stage, nervous of sticking a flag in and saying, 'Yes, this is all Norris's now'. But that's a very handy points advantage to have with just three rounds left, isn't it?
"It does seem to be a part of a flow of confidence; he previously was a bit dependent upon certain conditions and certain things happening in the right way for him. Now it does look as though he's got a much fuller handle on the situation than earlier in the season. It's looking pretty good for him."
Norris's advantage is such that, with three grands prix and one sprint left in 2025, he doesn't need to win another race this season to be crowned champion. Noble called that buffer of points that he's built up "tremendously important".
"If you want to put some money down, I think for the first time properly now since the Summer break, we've probably got a clear favourite just because of the way the direction of travel's gone," said Noble.
"It's not done, but it [Norris's advantage over Piastri] gives him, I think, enough room to sleep quite calmly at night. But I think he still needs to keep pushing on," he added.
"Having been through this experience last year, having been through the troubles earlier on this year, having been quite calm after what happened in Zandvoort, I think he will maintain that focus and keep pushing on, just keep pushing now [to achieve] what's needed to get it across the line."
For Straw, that meant Norris is now "in control" unequivocally. "If he executes three good weekends and doesn't have any bad luck, he should be champion," he said.
"But of course, although things look good now - two wins on the bounce, looking not just in control points-wise, but in terms of himself, his mentality, his execution etc - it only takes one thing to knock him off that.
"It's so tempting, always, you get one swing one way and you say, 'All right, that's it'. People were doing that after Zandvoort with Piastri, who obviously had a handy lead after Norris had the engine failure.
"It's not that long a way to go, but there is still a long way to go and it'll feel like a very long way to go for Lando Norris."
Can Piastri claw it back?
Despite the current trajectory, with 83 points still up for grabs across the final three weekends Piastri is a long way from being out of the title fight: the big recent points swing might have gone in Norris's favour, but it only takes one bad weekend for the championship leader for all to come unstuck again for the leading McLaren.
"For Oscar, it's not over until it's over. I think if Lando had 24 points [over Piastri] heading into Abu Dhabi [the season finale], I don't think he would be relaxed and thinking, 'It's all done'. Because it's not done until it is finished," said Noble.
"Lando could have this 24-point advantage on the final lap in Abu Dhabi, leading from Oscar, [then] something happens, he retires, Piastri wins, Oscar's world champion."
But there was also consensus that while the 10-second penalty Piastri received for his restart incident with Kimi Antonelli that ended Charles Leclerc's race was harsh, it was also a potentially pivotal moment in the title fight.
"These are the moments that world championships are won [on]," said Noble. "A different position for Kimi's car, they don't touch or Oscar's through and everyone's talking about what a fantastic thing this [the move he attempted] is in the championship."
Assessing the move, Hughes felt it was "a racing incident" but added Piastri's move "didn't meet the letter of the driving guidelines".
"He hadn't done enough to entitle himself to racing room so if there's then a collision it's deemed to be his fault," he explained. "The driving guidelines don't adequately cover every situation; this was one of those that fell through the cracks.
"Looking at it just as a traditional way of things are, that would just be one of those things. It wasn't deliberate, it ended up in a collision, it ended up taking out a third party but it was just one of those things for me."
Straw conceded it was a "fairly big blow" to Piastri's title hopes, coming a day after Piastri also crashed out of the sprint race while running third.
"The sprint crash actually wasn't quite as costly as maybe it felt like," he said. "He was only nine points behind but combined with what happened on Sunday, he's very much playing catch up.
"As we've seen before, it can all turn just like that. [Las] Vegas is a slightly unusual circuit. I know we said that Interlagos would be kind of the measure where Piastri is, Qatar is the obvious one, but I think we can conclude that this is a difficult phase of the season for him.
"He's struggling for various reasons to get all these things kind of balled together to make it feel more like a crisis. It's not a crisis but it's a tough run and Norris had a tough run earlier in the year.
"It's come at a bad time for Piastri in terms of him slipping from championship favourite to very much playing catch up but he's still in it."
Verstappen's hopes hang by a thread
Are Verstappen's chances over?
He seemed to believe so after being knocked out in the first part of qualifying, marking Red Bull's first double Q1 elimination since Japan 2006. But a pitlane start for a new power unit - a decision that caught McLaren's eye - and overhauling the car again, finally to avail, allowed him to limit the damage with a "vintage Verstappen" drive, in Hughes's words, to third.
He ideally needed to win either one or both of the Interlagos races but, as the panel discussed, the rapid pace of Verstappen and Red Bull in the grand prix overshadowed McLaren and Norris's celebrations.
"Lando after the race was adamant if Verstappen had started anywhere near the front, he would have won. [He was of the opinion that Verstappen] was faster than us," Hughes commented.
"I think that's probably true and I think it's quite odd the way the Red Bull's weekend went, because if the car hadn't been so disastrously bad in qualifying, not even getting out of Q1, they wouldn't have taken that apart.
"They wouldn't have had another go to set it up and they wouldn't have put the new power unit in and if they just left it as it was in a sprint and not change it from that, you probably would have qualified about on the third row and would have generally been left behind by certainly the McLarens and probably the Mercs as well, and had a fifth-place finish.
"But because it went so badly, the second attempt at a set-up, they pulled it out apart and made a third attempt at the set-up. That's what switched it on finally, and that's what brought the race alive and gave us another vintage Verstappen performance from the background at Interlagos.
"It really was all those things that came together perfectly for Verstappen and he really exploited it to the full."
Nevertheless, there was little doubt that Verstappen's title chances are now a long shot, with 49 points to make up on Norris.
"Verstappen now is going to need a tremendous amount of luck; I think he needed one lucky weekend heading into Brazil if he was going to have a hope of getting this championship; he's going to need two out of three lucky weekends of a big points haul and both McLarens out if he's going to get back in it," said Noble.
"The hands of fortune will decide if Max Verstappen has any hopes; I don't think he can do this alone."
