The 2025 Formula 1 season was supposed to be Lando Norris' year, following McLaren's second-half resurgence to win the 2024 constructor title, even as Red Bull's Max Verstappen won his fourth consecutive world championship.
So had we posted an article with this headline in, say, late August, it would have been a compliment directly toward Piastri, who had a 34-point lead over Norris following his Dutch Grand Prix Grand Chelem, despite entering the year as McLaren's so-called No. 2 driver.
Piastri was clearly performing at a higher level than Norris for much of the year. Norris was labeled a "choker" who "couldn't handle the pressure" or put together a full season, while Piastri was supposedly "cool under pressure" and among the least shakable drivers in Formula 1 history. Norris, of course, didn't do himself any favors with his Canadian Grand Prix crash.
It's been relatively clear all along that Zak Brown and McLaren have prioritized Norris, and as Piastri built upon his mid-season lead, Brown was mocked for the "Lando Norris era" claim he made to start the year.
But shy of the team actually sabotaging Piastri by turning down his engine or something hilariously unrealistic following Norris' Zandvoort engine failure, the past two and a half months have shown us why Norris is still their number one driver.
Oscar Piastri has turned into who fans wanted Lando Norris to be
The so-called most calm, cool, and collected driver in Formula 1 history spun out in the rain in Melbourne to start the year, which should have been a sign he wasn't yet ready to take that next step.
He also let a much slower Verstappen get into his head at Silverstone, losing the race to Norris due to a penalty that he easily could have avoided by simply driving the race car to a clear win.
He had a disastrous all-around weekend in Baku, capped off by an opening lap crash, which marked his first DNF since 2023, and he is now on his longest podium-less streak since the start of the 2024 season.
That streak continued when he drove into the side of Kimi Antonelli and took out Charles Leclerc at Interlagos to secure himself a 10-second penalty that was apparently obvious to everybody but him.
After he won three races in a row back in April and May, though, fans were ready to crown him a "generational talent", and a world championship was supposedly a foregone conclusion. He was unflappable, while Norris was "overrated" and "mid".
Now Norris is up by 24 points with three Grands Prix (plus one sprint race) remaining. Take away the engine failure in the Netherlands, and he'd be up by 42 points.
I don't think I'm offering up anything ground-breaking by saying Verstappen is still the class of the field. The Red Bull has been a handful all year, so the fact that he's still even remotely close to either McLaren driver is impressive, especially after a year in which he became the first driver to win the title while driving for the third place team since 1983.
Norris isn't a bad driver; far from it. He's likely less than a month away from being crowned world champion. The car is a rocket ship, but that takes nothing away from what he's achieving, even if he has childishly tried to shade the successes of others by referencing the speed of their cars.
It's still relatively obvious he's not on the Verstappen, Hamilton, Schumacher, or Senna level, because every Formula 1 fan has seen what at least one of them has been able to do when they're in the fastest car – and perhaps more importantly, when they're not.
Still, with two consecutive wins to retake the points lead, he's turned out to be more Piastri-like than Piastri supposedly was, and he's done it when it's mattered most. And unfortunately for Piastri, he has turned into exactly the driver fans accused Norris of being after a mid-season rough patch.
Because over the past six races, Piastri has gone from 34 ahead to 24 behind, and yes, that 58-point swing would still be a 52-point swing even if the much-maligned Monza swap had not been enforced.
For what it's worth, it's no wonder Brown once wanted Alex Palou for his Formula 1 team. For as shady as he has acted over the course of the court trial surrounding Palou's breached McLaren contract (Disappearing messages? Really?), he knew after Palou's out-of-nowhere 2021 IndyCar breakout campaign that he was something special.
Palou is as fast as anybody and less mistake-prone than everybody. He would have wrapped up the world championship by August if he were in the MCL39. It's obviously not provable, but anybody who has been a longtime fan of both Formula 1 and IndyCar would have a hard time arguing against it.
But getting back to Piastri, it goes to show just how bogus so many of the fan-favorite Formula 1 narratives are.
Piastri was completely unproven entering the year after finishing considerably behind Norris in both 2023 and 2024. Yet because he won a couple races and doesn't smile, he was suddenly the most cold-blooded driver in history.
Now the driver who was supposedly unstoppable is in the midst of a collapse the likes of which Formula 1 is simply not accustomed to seeing, and because of it, another driver whom fans still aren't completely sold on as being a top-tier talent is on course to become the 2025 world champion.
Piastri has still had a great year. Winning seven races is nothing to scoff at. But it's Norris who has emerged at the top of his game when the lights are at their brightest, which is exactly what fans thought would be possible not for him but for his teammate.