Our verdict on Norris's win and Mercedes team orders

What do back-to-back victories for Lando Norris and McLaren mean for Formula 1's title fight?

And was Mercedes right to order George Russell to let Kimi Antonelli pass him in the closing stages of the Dutch Grand Prix?

Here's what our team thinks...

There's caveats to McLaren's rise...

Ben Anderson

I'm not getting too excited about a potential Norris title fightback just yet, simply because...

1) Mercedes has barely upgraded its car since the start of the season, yet was still right in the mix for poles and wins here against a McLaren that has basically been totally overhauled these past two grands prix.

2) There's a bit of an engine offset as well as an upgrade offset that's currently working in McLaren's favour. Norris got a new engine as recently as Spa, three races ago. The Mercedes drivers' engines are another two races older (Austria).

Once Antonelli gets a new engine for Monza (even if a grid drop means more pain there), and Mercedes finally releases some more aero upgrades onto that car, I can see things swinging quickly back in favour of the Silver Arrows.

The big caveat here is whether Mercedes is deliberately sitting on upgrades and just waiting to unleash them once others have run out of spending power, or whether there's something else at play that means they need to upgrade the car but can't afford to (as team boss Toto Wolff claims).

If Mercedes is actually broke under F1's cost cap that could be game-changing.

But regardless of all that it's good to see Norris's excellent driving this season finally being rewarded with the results it deserves.

Teams order wasn't necessary

Gary Anderson

With (likely) 10 races to go, the championship is by no means decided; however, Mercedes and Antonelli just need to keep taking home as many points as they can without going into a risky zero-points situation and they should win both championships.

Yes, Ferrari and McLaren are closing in, but as for the drivers' championship, Antonelli is 59 points ahead of both his team-mate Russell and Hamilton, so over two race DNFs of a cushion. Norris is another 24 behind, so 83 in total or over three DNFs cushion. Leclerc is another four behind, so 87 in total.

The championship is still well and truly mathematically possible for Russell, so it meant he wasn’t a happy camper when he was asked to let Antonelli through for second at the end of the race.

Personally, I wouldn’t have done that because there was no way that Antonelli was going to catch Norris, and they were on a different strategy and different tyres, so perhaps a quick warning to not take each other out would have been a fairer message. Then let them get the result they had raced for.

Politically, it showed a little bias towards Antonelli, but I’m sure that will get discussed behind closed doors.

It was really the same for Hamilton and Leclerc when Hamilton was asking for Ferrari to move Leclerc aside. I think each driver should be racing 21 other cars, especially if it’s because of a strategy variance and that improving your position through team orders simply ends up being a shallow victory.

I wouldn’t count out Ferrari for a Monza one-two; somehow it always brings something to the party, but as I say, for Antonelli, he just needs to do what he is doing and keep his nose clean.

Antonelli has this under control

Josh Suttill

I don't see Kimi Antonelli as any more under threat than he has been for most of F1 2026.

To me, it feels like a 2019-type season. A benchmark car (Mercedes) and a benchmark driver (Lewis Hamilton then, Kimi Antonelli now) build a solid lead early in the year. They're then beaten to victories later in the year by different cars (Ferrari and Red Bull then, Ferrari and McLaren now), but no single challenger emerges clearly enough to make it a proper title fight.

George Russell is more of a threat to Antonelli than Valtteri Bottas was to Lewis Hamilton back then, but he's still not that much of a threat. Would Mercedes have pulled that team order if he was?

Antonelli is just fundamentally the faster Mercedes driver right now, and it means every Sunday he's finishing ahead unless he encounters serious strife.

As for Mercedes' rivals, Antonelli only needs to be worried if McLaren blows it away on an energy-poor circuit; otherwise, the pendulum will probably keep swinging between McLaren and Ferrari as the primary long-shot title rival.

Piastri risks falling behind

Samarth Kanal

Oscar Piastri has been almost anonymous in this Lando Norris purple patch, and the Australian is scrambling for answers.

McLaren has outdeveloped Mercedes and stymied Ferrari's progress, but Piastri has been left behind in all of this - and he's now closer to Red Bull's Isack Hadjar (36 points behind) than he is to Norris (55 points ahead).

Not only does Piastri risk falling behind in the drivers' championship, McLaren now risks having just one driver in the constructors' championship fight against Ferrari.