Lando Norris, world champion. It slotted into place in the season finale in a way no one could have any real complaints about. Max Verstappen won his eighth race of 2025 (more than anyone else) to cap a truly brilliant seasonal performance, but Norris did all he needed to do in finishing a conservative third.
The way McLaren went about winning one of its drivers a title for the first time in 17 years essentially shaped the race. Norris’ points lead coming in saw McLaren use its two-against-one dynamic against Verstappen in the title fight.
McLaren’s split strategy of putting Oscar Piastri on the hard tyre at the start was an inspired one – and took Red Bull completely by surprise, as confirmed by its team principal, Laurent Mekies post-race. “Once they did that, it gave them a lot of flexibility and limited what we could do strategically in response.”
With Piastri making a committed move around the medium-tyred Norris’ outside at Turn 9 on lap 1 – and Norris not defending too hard – the McLaren plan became clear. On his hard tyres Piastri would force Verstappen to push his mediums – and leave Norris to nurse his and reduce the risk of the right-front graining, which was an underlying concern. That obliterated any possibility of Verstappen backing Norris up into the pack, Hamilton 2016-style. But even without the McLaren strategy, it’s far from certain that backing up the pack would have worked as it did in 2016.
The layout of the track has changed significantly, taking out key slow corners and leaving you highly vulnerable to being passed under DRS by the end of the extended straights if you came onto them too slowly.
Regardless, with Piastri set to run much longer than would be feasible for Verstappen, it prised the race apart for McLaren’s title task. There were a few moments of jeopardy within that plan, though – and they were rooted in how hard Charles Leclerc was pushing his Ferrari, hard enough to be keeping up with Norris. Leclerc at 100% effort in that car was able to lap in pretty similar lap times to the tyre-saving Norris at around 80%.
But the benefits of Norris nursing his tyres didn’t properly play out, as he was forced to switch earlier than planned. George Russell, running a couple of seconds behind Leclerc, went for an early undercut on him, on lap 14 of 58, obliging Ferrari and Norris to respond a couple of laps later to cover him off.
This was before Norris had been running long enough to establish a pitstop’s worth of gap – and so he exited in the midfield traffic. Which included – spicily – the other Red Bull of Yuki Tsunoda, running on hards in very obvious strategic support to Verstappen.
Tsunoda’s weaving on the back straight failed to prevent Norris from passing – and he had already completed committed moves on the other slower cars which had yet to stop. That brought him back up to the top three, within about 6s of Verstappen after the latter had made his stop. It had been a little trickier than it might have been, but Norris was under full control of his task.
Piastri remained out leading for a further 18 laps on his hards and was just about to be brought in when that had to wait a lap because Norris needed to be pitted to close off another Leclerc threat – as Ferrari had pitted him a second time. The second stop kept the cruising Norris ahead of the Ferrari but dropped him behind Piastri, he’d otherwise have been ahead of after the latter rejoined.
The relative age of the tyres of Verstappen (30 laps-old with five laps to go) and the McLarens meant Piastri and Norris were over 1s faster, but way too far back for that to matter. After being discouraged from chasing Piastri too hard, Norris backed off and eased himself into the result that will forever change his status.
Leclerc’s thrashing of the limited capabilities of the Ferrari to fourth and keeping Norris vaguely in reach was a sensational performance, with George Russell’s tyre-graining Mercedes falling away latterly in fifth but always clear of Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin, who put on a late spurt just in case Lewis Hamilton had succeeded in passing the seventh place Haas of Esteban Ocon. But Ocon defended perfectly.
Despite his dispiriting weekend, Hamilton was among the first to seek out Norris and congratulate him.
