McLaren pair Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris continued their extraordinarily tight Formula 1 title battle at the Belgian Grand Prix with the Aussie edging out his team-mate at Spa

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are pushing each other hard for individual glory(Image: Formula 1 via Getty Images)

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has told his title-chasing drivers exactly what factors will decide the outcome of their battle for individual glory. McLaren have been so dominant this year that the constructors’ championship already looks like little more than a formality.

They are 268 points ahead of nearest challengers Ferrari after only 13 rounds of the 24-race season. There is still a long way to go but, with most teams now focused on developing their 2026 cars for the new regulations, only a far-fetched series of events will stop them now.

But there is still plenty to be decided in the hunt for the drivers’ title. Max Verstappen is slipping further back and seems highly unlikely to make it five in a row now, and so it is down to the two McLaren drivers to beat each other to individual honours.

Lando Norris looked to have been building momentum heading towards the summer break. His back-to-back wins in Austria and at Silverstone, in front of his home fans, saw him narrow the gap to Oscar Piastri above him in the championship to just a single-figure amount.

But then the balance of power shifted again at Spa-Francorchamps. Norris got pole but it was Piastri who flew through on the first lap to take the lead and control of Sunday’s Grand Prix and, from there, he controlled it with the finesse and calm for which the young Aussie has become so well respected during his still relatively short time in Formula 1.

What is clear is that both drivers are operating at an astonishing level, no doubt being pushed to those heights by one another. The points gap between them has been very narrow for some time now and it looks likely to be the case for much of the rest of the year if they can both keep up this standard.

Their boss Stella thinks their can and believes it will be the finest of margins which decides who will be the drivers’ champion by the end of the year. He said: “There is very, very little between our two drivers, and this is because the two drivers are racing at a very, very high level.

“We are lucky at McLaren to have two drivers that deservedly are fighting for the World Championship. I think the difference will be made by the accuracy, the precision, the quality of the execution. We saw in Silverstone that an issue, a sporting issue for Oscar during the Safety Car restart, and the consequent penalty cost him the race.

And here we saw that somehow related to the circuit characteristic, like you said before, like it would have always been very difficult for Lando to keep the position, starting first, at the same restart. At the same time, I think Lando didn’t help himself. So I think the execution is what is going to make the main difference.

“We as a team, we will try and make sure that from a reliability point of view, from team operation point of view, we are as good as possible such that you will be the drivers deciding their own outcome in terms of competing for the Drivers’ World Championship.”