Lando Norris’ victory at Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix provided a succinct answer to his critics. With a mix of solid race craft, calmness under pressure and, above all, sheer performance, he has once again shifted a title narrative that appeared ready to write him off following his disastrous Canadian Grand Prix two weeks earlier.

For three days at the Red Bull Ring, Norris had the measure of his McLaren teammate and title rival Oscar Piastri, who struggled to find an answer for Norris’ performance in practice, qualifying and the race. Even when the Australian nosed ahead with an overtake at Turn 3 on Lap 11, Norris retook the lead at the very next corner to reclaim control of the situation.

Of course, one result does not make a season, and Norris still faces a significant challenge to close the 15-point gap to Piastri in the drivers’ standings. What’s more, had he not secured the win in Austria — and there were times in the first stint of the race when Piastri put it in doubt — his title hopes would have taken a bitter, potentially irrevocable, blow.

For a driver whose self-inflicted mistakes have regularly sparked doubts about his credibility as a champion contender, Austria could prove to be a turning point.

“I mean, it’s certainly fulfilling for me,” Norris said Sunday evening. “It gives me good confidence. I don’t need to prove any points or prove anything to anyone, honestly. I like to prove things to myself, probably more than anything.

“So certainly, it’s been a good, clean weekend from FP2 onwards. Felt very comfortable and very on top of the car and performed exactly as I want to and as I need to. I just had a clean weekend. That’s what I had.”

Clean weekends are what Norris has most desperately lacked this year. Mistakes, most notably in the final session of qualifying, have been all too common for the 25-year-old, even when he appeared to have the edge over Piastri on performance.

But at the Red Bull Ring — a circuit at which Norris took his first F1 podium and has always performed well — he looked convincingly faster. You could argue that has been the case at four of the past five races (Imola, Monaco, Canada despite his collision with Piastri, and Austria), but to maximize the advantage with pole and victory cast Norris’ title credentials in a different light.

“It’s not that I’ve not been able to do it before, and the pace has always been there at certain points,” he said. “It’s just there’s been some different reasons for different things. But certainly, coming in today and yesterday to do the job that I did, I’m pretty happy with. But it doesn’t come easily. It doesn’t come just because I’ve turned up this weekend and things are better. I’m working a lot. I’m doing a lot more work than I used to away from the track with the team, on the simulator, with my own team, trying to improve everything that I can both on and off the track.

“I think it’s more a positive thing to see a lot of those things paying off immediately. Good step in the right direction. Still need more, so want more. So, we’ll keep working.”

Team principal Andrea Stella said conversations with Norris after Canada had been about building up his driver rather than pointing the finger of blame. Norris had already turned that finger on himself in the aftermath of the Montreal crash, and, according to Stella, the focus quickly shifted to building his confidence back up in time for Austria.

“The conversations were all about the fact that the speed is there,” Stella said. “He had pole position and victory in Monaco. When he touched the wall in qualifying in Canada, he was in line for pole position. He was the fastest car in Canada in the race and he had, in fact, pole position here in Austria. The speed is there, we just have to polish a few things in execution and the results will come, which is what Lando has demonstrated here in Austria.

“So I’m very proud of Lando, very proud of how everyone handled the situation in Canada and the fact that we ended up more united and stronger.”

Even with his dropped points in Canada, Norris has outscored Piastri 86 to 85 in the past five races. Viewed that way, and based on the performance he has shown relative to Piastri, Norris is still looking like a contender in spite of his mistakes.

Piastri finds the limit

During the first stint of the race, Norris’ victory looked anything but certain. Piastri was able to push his teammate hard and position his car directly on the gearbox of the other McLaren right up until Norris made the first pit stop of the two at the end of Lap 20.

The battle featured plenty of wheel-to-wheel racing, including arguably Piastri’s best chance when Norris ran wide in the final two corners of Lap 14 and Piastri was briefly presented with the opportunity of a risky move at Turn 1. He turned that one down, but five laps later appeared somewhat braver as he aimed his McLaren at a gap on the inside of Norris at Turn 4 — albeit a gap that then closed and forced Piastri to lock up and run wide.

For McLaren, it reached the limit of what’s allowed between the two drivers, and Piastri was informed over team radio that the move was “too marginal.” He later agreed with the pit wall and apologized over team radio after the checkered flag.

“I think the fact that Oscar acknowledged it and said that he was sorry for that situation means that he knew that, especially at that phase of the stint when your front tires are quite aged, if you go for that gap you may not be entirely in control of the car, you may lock up,” Stella explained. “So I think the issue that I saw there is that the tires were locked, and with the lockup you lose control of the car, and we don’t want now the proximity of the two cars being determined by something that we are not fully in control of.

“So I think that’s our interpretation, which I think coincides with the interpretation of Oscar. And from every situation we will take the opportunity to review, we do it together, the conversations are always very good and constructive, and we will fine-tune even more for the future.”

The near miss signaled the end of the wheel-to-wheel fighting, with Norris pitting at the end of the Lap 20 while Piastri stayed out four laps longer. That turned the fight into a proxy battle where Norris’ lead extended by virtue of switching to fresh tires earlier, but Piastri emerged on younger tires that would, in theory, give him a performance advantage in the second stint.

Before committing to the offset strategy, Piastri was given the option of pitting the lap after Norris and emerging 1.5 seconds behind his teammate or holding out for the tire advantage and emerging four seconds behind. He chose the latter, although in reality the gap was six seconds by the time he rejoined the race.

Hindsight helpfully informs us that Piastri was unable to recover those six seconds with his younger tires, but Stella believes that was in part down to Norris’ pace in the second stint.

“You have two options in that kind of situation,” the McLaren team principal explained. “The first option is to pit right away, one lap after the car in the lead. It means you’re going to be probably a couple of seconds behind and pretty much with the same tire age. The other option is to delay the stop so that you build the so-called tire delta. And then once you stop, you’re going to be possibly three, four seconds, but you will have better tires.

“And then you will have a stint closing onto the car that stopped before you. In circuits with high tire degradation like here, normally staying out gives you a benefit. I think today it wasn’t necessarily apparent because we cannot separate how the strategy worked for Oscar from how fast Lando actually was.

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Norris and Piastri reflect on 1-2 finish at Austrian GP

McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri give their immediate reaction to their first and second place finishes at the Austrian Grand Prix.

“Because I think Lando was actually fast in the second stint with the hard tires and this didn’t allow Oscar to capitalize on the fact that he had built this tire delta. I think Lando, without the pressure of having to defend all the time, he used perhaps a one-tenth advantage of pace and he made Oscar’s strategy look like it didn’t work out.”

A ‘two-horse race’

After Kimi Antonelli crashed into Max Verstappen’s Red Bull on the opening lap, the defending champion’s threadbare title hopes looked in tatters by Sunday evening. A gap of 61 points to Piastri in the drivers’ standings and a car that cannot be relied upon to perform in all conditions makes it extremely unlikely that Verstappen will overhaul both McLarens and retain his title.

On Sunday evening, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was reluctant to admit Verstappen’s title hopes were over, but he couldn’t deny the facts of the situation.

“I think this season, the buffer that [McLaren] have is significant,” Horner said. “It looks very much like a two-horse race. For us, we just focus on every single grand prix, and you try and grab every opportunity.”

The good news for the rest of us is that the two-horse race has all the hallmarks of a genuine title battle that has the potential to go down to the wire. At this stage it’s impossible to say with certainty who will emerge victorious at the next race, let alone in the championship.

“I think with both drivers we need to look one race at a time, and in the one race at a time we need to make sure that we maximize the potential, we stay in the race, and we race each other according to our approach and principles,” Stella said. “And then we will see in Abu Dhabi what the outcome is.”