Lando Norris's retirement from the Dutch Grand Prix is the first time the 2025 Formula 1 title fight has been seriously impacted by mechanical misfortune.
Dropping out of a close second place behind Oscar Piastri with an engine problem in the final laps at Zandvoort leaves Norris 34 points behind his team-mate with nine events to go.
Can Norris realistically come back from that given Piastri's form this year? Here are our team's immediate thoughts:
Piastri can make this irrelevant
Ben Anderson
There's always a chance title battles can effectively be decided by mechanical misfortune or bad luck, but in this case it will all depend on whether Norris is able to finish the season closer in points to Piastri than the deficit he should have left Zandvoort with.
Without that engine failure, Norris was most likely to finish second and see Piastri's lead extend to 16 points. If he finishes 2025 closer than that, without the benefit of an equivalent failure for Piastri over the final nine races, you can make a fair case to say the Zandvoort DNF was pivotal in deciding the destiny of the title race.
But not necessarily an iron-clad one. What about the strategy curveball that allowed Norris to win from behind in Hungary when Piastri looked to be in control? When a two-horse race is so finely balanced, there are many unknowns that can tip the scales.
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Personally, I feel Piastri has been gradually tightening his grip and edging ahead in terms of being more consistently the stronger McLaren driver, and that means he's more often than not likely to be the one doing the winning.
If he can maintain this trajectory and continue to extend his lead, he should win the title based on pure performance, which would ultimately mean this bit of bad luck for Norris wouldn't really matter at all.
It's still open but…
Edd Straw
It's potentially decisive, but we can only judge that in retrospect. Norris still has a car capable of winning every race and there are still nine events to go. What's more, reliability is never a given, so there's every possibility Piastri might have a failure of his own to cancel that out. Equally, Norris could end up with another failure that costs him a second time.
It's always tempting to assume that whatever the current picture or the short-term trend is will continue indefinitely, but that's rarely the case.
In Norris's position he simply has to shrug it off, accept it's something that's out of his hands and focus on what is in his control, which is execution over the coming races. Remember, he was already going to lose seven points, so this failure 'only' cost him 18. What's more, F1 seasons, even when one team is dominant, never run as predicted and there will be more swings both for and against.
What is clear, however, is that Piastri has gone from narrow favourite to a far stronger favourite.
On The Race F1 Podcast ahead of Zandvoort I put it 55/45 in Piastri's favour, but after today I'd estimate it's more in the region of 75/25.
That's not just because of the points situation, but also because Piastri now has a cushion that means he can more easily afford to settle for second place while Norris has to play catch-up. History suggests that usually it's the driver with the advantage that closes it out.
What Piastri cannot afford to do and will not do, because he's wiser than that, is think for one moment it's job done. This race might have been a step on the road to the title, but it became a very significant stride once Norris ground to a halt.
Don't let this put a shadow on a Piastri title
Jack Benyon
Weirdly, I feel most sorry for Piastri in this situation.
He's been the better McLaren driver across the course of the year, and now people may well look back and remember this - admittedly extremely unfair - Norris retirement and say that was the key turning point in the championship if Piastri indeed goes on to win it as is now expected.
The key turning point happened much earlier, and that is that Piastri has gone from Norris's understudy to besting him in key moments and regularly across the course of this season. That was the turning point in 2025, not this incident.
Norris now needs luck
Scott Mitchell-Malm
A massive points swing, a healthy lead, and another Norris stronghold broken - Piastri couldn't have hoped for a better weekend. And while there's still plenty of time for Norris to turn the tables, and do it himself, I think he needs assistance now to be world champion.
The evidence of 2025 so far does not suggest Norris is about to go and win the majority of the final nine races, which is almost certainly what's required. It's possible, it just doesn't seem likely to me. Not when Piastri is so fast and so consistent that he is able to beat Norris on any given weekend, even the tracks where he was battered last year.
Norris is quick enough, and has the car, to win more than Piastri over the rest of the season. He could win five, six, all of the last nine races. Or what befell Norris at Zandvoort could happen to Piastri at one or more of the remaining nine events.
So it's not that Norris doesn't still have a path to the title. Piastri could also have a couple of big stumbles under pressure. But do any of those scenarios now feel more likely than Piastri consolidating this lead? Not to me. He was already a slim favourite. Now the odds are very much in his favour.
Piastri had his bad luck already
Val Khorounzhiy
It's not over. Not with a 34-point gap, when 33 is available over a sprint weekend, when an 18-point swing like this can happen for a mechanical failure - or, say, for a rival misjudging an attacking or defensive move, or for a very botched pitstop, or for the myriad other things that can happen during an F1 race.
But Piastri is, of course, a very clear favourite now, because more often than not these two cars do finish races, and on current performance pattern they will keep finishing races 1-2.
I feel for Norris, especially as he handled his DNF very, very graciously, but I can only feel so bad for him given that in a certain sense this is F1 returning the favour for what happened to Piastri in the Melbourne season opener - where he lost 16 points in the title battle through very little fault of his own.
It just felt less dramatic because it was before we had definitively known that this would be a two-horse title race.
Piastri has been the better McLaren driver this season, but the average gap between them is certainly not insurmountable - so the maths on a Norris title comeback is hardly impossible even if he doesn't get to make use of any engine failures on the #81.
