McLaren Formula 1 driver Lando Norris said he can now be more "chill" about his points gap to title rival Oscar Piastri, suggesting he isn't convinced he can turn it around without outside factors intervening.
The McLaren MCL39 expiring in a puff of smoke on lap 65 of 72 in the Dutch Grand Prix cost Norris a nailed-on 18 points, dropping him to 34 back from Piastri.
It's the largest the gap has been all season, and the first time it's ticked over not just the 33-point mark (a full points haul from a grand prix weekend) but even the 25-point mark (a full points haul from a non-sprint grand prix).
Given the cost of the failure to his championship aspirations, Norris was already relatively sanguine in his reaction to race engineer Will Joseph as he parked up at the side of the road, hardly raising his tone of voice.
LN: Oil leak. I'm out. Failure. [swearing]
WJ: OK.
WJ: Can you bring it back?
LN: I'm out, I'm out.
LN: No, no. It's gone. [swearing]
WJ: OK.
WJ: Sorry, mate. You were fast today, you were really fast.
LN: Yeah... It doesn't matter, mate.
WJ: I know. But you were fast.
LN: I know, I know. Unlucky, boys. Unlucky.
It was a reaction that team boss Andrea Stella said showed Norris "immediately kept his constructive mindset".
And Norris's post-race debrief with the media went along the same lines, as he acknowledged it was "just not my weekend", given also the narrow, wind-affected defeat in qualifying.
"Tough one, of course it's frustrating, it hurts a bit, it hurts for sure in the championship point of view, it's a lot of points to lose so quickly and so easily," Norris said.
🗣️ Sky Sports: “What thoughts are going through your head right now?”
— The Race (@wearetherace) August 31, 2025
🗣️ Lando: “Not much, just wanna go have a burger and go home.” pic.twitter.com/TEnShQAu5N
"But, yeah, nothing I can control now so just take it on the chin and move on."
But Norris also admitted the 34 points is an ominous gap to overcome - which seemed to contribute to his acceptance of the situation.
Though this is highly improbable, assuming McLaren finishes 1-2 in every grand prix and sprint from here on out, if Norris were to win each of those races he'd take 63 points out of Piastri. But even splitting the grand prix wins six to three in Norris's favour, assuming no big swings in the sprints, would allow Piastri to hang on comfortably.
"The only thing I can do is try and win every race," Norris said.
"That's going to be difficult. But I'll make sure I give it everything I can.
"I thought honestly this weekend was good, I didn't lose out by much in qualy, but I felt always pretty on top of things, and a couple of little errors to improve on, but if it wasn't for a little gust of wind down the start-finish [straight] yesterday I'd be on pole. And I'm sure the race would've looked a bit different today.
"The pace was very strong today, so...there's so many positives, it's just close.
"I have a good team-mate. He's strong, he's quick in every situation, every scenario. It's hard to get things back on someone who's just good in pretty much every situation.
"But today is a different situation. It's just unlucky, it's not my fault, and sometimes that's just racing.
"It certainly hasn't helped, the race, it's only made it harder for me and put me under more pressure, but it's almost a big enough gap now that I can just chill out about it and just go for it."
Stella, too, talked up Norris's capacity to put this behind him.
"He's one of the most fair, balanced - in a way, I would almost say, like, trustworthy - individuals, before being so as a driver," he said.
"We will give, if anything, maximum support to make sure that he's staying in the fighting spirit, but like we said before, I think this will come very naturally and if anything, we may see even a better version of Lando, because now is the time to extract, if there is anything more, even more out of his potential."
No clarity on cause yet
Norris said the burning smell he reported on the radio was the first sign of anything going awry - and, though he admitted he didn't know the exact cause, seemed to treat the failure as just a typical engine blow-up, albeit considerably less typical in this era of F1.
"I think the team and [Mercedes] HPP have done a very good job over the last two years," added Norris.
"I think we've had pretty much minimal [issues] - this might be the first one that I can remember, that's cost us any points or anything at all.
"We don't expect anything [to go wrong], really. It's not like in the olden days where you used to pretty much blow up every other race.
"We don't expect it nowadays. It's just... yeah, frustrating, unlucky, and that's it."
Stella, for his part, was particularly careful not to name a cause yet or apportion blame.
"We have some initial indications based on the data. But, in fairness, we don't have full proof of what has happened on Lando's car. So I would refrain from making any speculation about, is it a problem on the chassis side or is it a problem on the engine side?
"In fairness, it doesn't make, in terms of the result, a big difference. Even in how this is perceived, let me say, I want to take the opportunity to remind ourselves that we just see chassis, engine - it's a single, one team.
"So, we will see technically where the problem is, we will fix it, and we will go again. But at the moment it's unclear on which side the problem is."
Mercedes F1 team boss Toto Wolff also said "we don't know if it was a PU or chassis failure yet, we [only] know it was an oil leak".
