Martin Brundle's verdict on 2025 Formula 1 season title fight between Lando Norris, Max Verstappen, Oscar Piastri
Sky Sports F1's Martin Brundle gives his final verdict on the 2025 Formula 1 season and the rollercoaster title fight between eventual champion Lando Norris, Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri; Norris became the 11th British driver to win the F1 world title after a tense decider in Abu Dhabi
Monday 8 December 2025 17:48, UK
Congratulations to Lando Norris on becoming Formula 1 world champion after a fine, but sometimes intense and challenging, 24 races. His victories in Melbourne, Monaco, Austria, Silverstone, Hungary, Mexico, and Brazil, with a total of 18 trips to the podium, were the highlights.
The low moments would be crashing into his team-mate Oscar Piastri in Canada with a clumsy move, a retirement in Zandvoort with oil issues, failing to take advantage of Piastri's nightmare weekend in Baku with a lowly seventh, technical disqualification in Las Vegas, and a poor strategy call by the team in Qatar limiting him to fourth. It was a rollercoaster season to say the least.
To handle all that, Lando made a big step forward in mind management this season, and he began to regularly convert pole position into the lead at the end of the first lap, a good example of which was Mexico's enormous run down to the first corner whilst slipstreaming the whole pack behind from pole position. He placed his car extremely well, narrowly ahead in a four-wide pack, then braked in the right place by just the right amount, claimed the first chicane cleanly and then simply dominated the race with ease.
- 'Lando's way' - How F1 got a new kind of champion
- F1 2026: Calendar, line-ups, new regulations, how to watch on Sky Sports
- Download the Sky Sports app for expert analysis, best video & more📱
- Not got Sky? Get Sky Sports or stream with no contract on NOW📺
He handled pressure situations much better, whether it was in qualifying, racing, or indeed out of the car. He gradually stopped being so publicly hard on himself which was only feeding his rivals. But he still stayed true to who he is and how he wants to behave in racing and learned to diffuse those moments when he wanted to berate himself to the world.
His racecraft has always been good and that was ramped up this year with more incisive overtakes and defending, and tyre management such as his Pirelli whispering victory in Budapest, much to Piastri's chagrin.
Did Monza impact Piastri in the run-in?
Norris still doesn't have Piastri's absolute laser guided and bold overtaking, and in many races Oscar took his turn to be undisputed class of the field with sensational victories in China, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Miami, Spain, Belgium, and, tellingly, his last of the season nine races ago in the Netherlands in August.
In Monza, he was asked to hand back a place to Lando after pit stops. For me it was a very clear decision by the team. They asked Lando to yield his priority pit stop, due to being the lead McLaren, over to Oscar to help his team-mate defend against Charles Leclerc's closing Ferrari, with a promise of no undercut. Lando played the team game and said 'yes' despite it being against his own best interests and it duly happened. Piastri received the first pit stop in 1.9 seconds and, somehow inevitably, Norris' took a yawning 5.9 seconds and there was indeed an undercut and Piastri was ahead.
The team corrected that back out on track. Of course, a slow pit stop is just part of any Grand Prix season but this one was delivered under specific circumstances. At least Piastri was now back in Norris' DRS range and was told he was free to race, and so still a net gain. Norris duly pulled away because he was the faster car/driver combo on the day.
If Oscar's head dropped because of that then he shouldn't have let that happen. At the next race he had a nightmare with two trips to the wall and a jumped start in Baku, and he wouldn't see the GP podium again until Qatar, a race weekend when he was head and shoulders above the pack, but only second place in the end due to the team choosing not to pit under the Lap 7 Safety Car.
Two factors created this fallow phase for Oscar, firstly a generally accepted fact that on low grip surfaces he's yet to maximise his full potential, but also Max Verstappen and Red Bull found a rich vein of form in winning six of the last nine starts.
Ifs, buts and maybes for all three title challengers
Max has been in extraordinary form in the closing stages of the championship having been 104 points behind at one stage and even saying himself that he wouldn't win another race after the summer. Well done to the team for energising the aerodynamics on their car, and a visibly happier and more relaxed Max for putting that to very good use.
'If only' is pointless in many ways, because over a championship season of 24 races and six Sprints, there are bound to be incidents for everyone. Every point counts whenever and however it is won, and interestingly we no longer had a point for fastest race lap this year, which could well have swung the championship as it happens.
But lessons must be learned, and all three drivers will rue errors, missed opportunities, sometimes brittle penalties, and red mist moments. Only Lando had a full mechanical DNF, and both McLarens were excluded from Vegas meaning they only had 23 GP results.
McLaren tried their best to be fair and equal to both drivers, which is admirable but created unwanted internal friction and negative media attention on occasions. This also meant that two number-one drivers took points from each other all season long.
Max didn't have this problem because he scored 421 of Red Bull's 451 points, but conversely, he didn't have anybody to help out maximising the potential of the car or race strategies, or to take points off the McLaren duo.
Whatever the ifs, buts, and should-have-beens, we ended up with a three-way shoot out in Abu Dhabi in which McLaren played a sharp hand of cards.
McLaren's smart Abu Dhabi strategy and Tsunoda's borderline driving
Verstappen scored yet another stunning pole position to claim the high ground of being able to control the race pace. It was very likely he would lead out of the first corner and he duly did.
There was much discussion throughout the paddock before the race that Red Bull had to disrupt the McLaren boys given that Lando only needed to stay in the top three, and we were fully expecting Max to slow the pack and hope to get Lando caught up with the likes of Charles Leclerc and George Russell.
McLaren did three key things. Firstly, third-place starter Piastri was put on hard compound tyres for a longer stint. Secondly it was agreed that if he could pass Norris cleanly and safely then do so and set after Max so that he couldn't play games on the pace. Thirdly, they ran Norris' race purely to protect the necessary third place, and with a final ace card in their pockets that Piastri could always fall back on the last lap if he couldn't personally win the title but an extra position for Norris would make the difference.
Charles Leclerc did his brilliant best in his Ferrari to take Lando's treasured championship-winning third place away, but McLaren and Lando stayed calm and did what was necessary to bring the car home. After the poor strategy decision on Qatar, this was a masterstroke because any other contenders in the field couldn't interfere with their progress. Except one.
In the second Red Bull, Yuki Tsunoda had been put on a very long hard-tyred stint in the certain knowledge that at some point Norris would have to pass him for position after his pit stop. I really don't mind a bit of strategic team play, everybody has two cars to use at their competitive best, but the 'you know what to do' radio calls were bordering on menacing, along with him being told the gap from Norris to Leclerc of 1.4 seconds.
Yuki should have backed Lando up from the tight turns 12 through to Turn Five on the next lap, that would have been relatively easy and very effective. Instead, he chose to weave down the back straight like a drunken sailor while breaching the regulations, and eventually forcing Norris to pass on a filthy part of the track, which became actually, off the track.
Tsunoda rightly got a five-second penalty for that clear breach, but what of Norris' pass off-track and maintaining an advantage? He couldn't hand the place back because Leclerc had now passed Tsunoda too. Fortunately for Norris, the stewards made a rational decision.
Apparently, there are guidelines that if a driver is forced off track to avoid an accident, then they can't be penalised for that. Others might say that Norris should have lifted off or tried to pass on the other side, but there was little doubt where the Red Bull was heading next.
Norris finished 6.7 seconds ahead of Leclerc and so a five-second penalty would have made no difference.
And so, the celebrations for Lando and his family, friends, and team began in champagne-soaked earnest, and it wasn't difficult to have a lump in your throat and maybe even quickly wiping away a tear. Nice people can win after all.
We say goodbye to Sauber, Renault power units, DRS rear wings, ground effect regulations, lifer journalists Michael Schmidt (750 races attended) and Mark 'Tabs' Hughes who are kind of retiring, and no doubt many other aspects of F1 life.
And we are saying goodbye to one of the best F1 championships I've had the pleasure to commentate on. Thanks for your company and have a great break.
MB
Watch every race of the 2026 F1 season live on Sky Sports, starting with the Australian Grand Prix from March 6-8. Stream Sky Sports with NOW - no contract, cancel anytime
