The key moments in Oscar Piastri’s Belgian GP win over Lando Norris

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the-key-moments-in-oscar-piastri’s-belgian-gp-win-over-lando-norris — The key moments in Oscar Piastri’s Belgian GP win over Lando Norris

As McLaren’s intra-team title rivalry heats up, these are the three key phases that enabled Oscar Piastri to defeat Lando Norris in a closely contested Belgian Grand Prix.

Piastri’s Eau Rouge bravery

The main turning point of the race was obviously the rolling start after four laps behind the safety car, with Piastri wasting little time to pass Norris on the Kemmel Straight.

The clearest factor behind Piastri’s overtake was a visible slide by Norris coming out of La Source, allowing Piastri to tuck in behind on the blast towards Eau Rouge and Raidillon. In a display of calculated bravery, Piastri stuck to Norris’ gearbox through Spa’s infamous corner combination and then managed to slingshot past with ease on the Kemmel Straight.

“I knew that lap one was going to be probably my best chance of winning the race,” he said. “I had a good run out of Turn 1 and then tried to be as brave as I could through Eau Rouge and was able to stay pretty close. I knew that I was just going to lift a little bit less than Lando did and try and keep it on the track. A bit lively up over the hill but managed to make it stick. I’d been thinking about it for a while. When I watched the onboard back, it didn’t look quite as scary as it felt in the car. I knew that I had to be very committed to pull that off.”

The seeds for Piastri’s overtake were actually planted much earlier, on the run between Stavelot and Blanchimont. As Norris dictated the restart point, Piastri immediately latched onto his team-mate to start piling on pressure, all but negating Norris’ advantage of a rolling start. And while Piastri wasn’t allowed to pass until the start-finish line, he was never more than two car lengths behind to pressurise Norris into his Turn 1 error, having a look down the inside before tucking back in.

Circled in orange: Piastri’s better acceleration out of Turn 1 and tactical lift before entering Eau Rouge

In fact, Piastri was so close to Norris coming out of Turn 1 that telemetry shows he strategically lifted to 75% throttle before entering Eau Rouge. Staying too close before the climb to Raidillon would have forced Piastri to lift off more significantly in the middle of Eau Rouge, whereas now he created enough space to fully exploit the momentum of his tow.

As team principal Andrea Stella pointed out: “I think the overtake ultimately came because it’s very difficult for the car that leads the pack to actually arrive first in Turn 5. It’s not impossible, but it does require decent advantage as you cross the finish line, which was not the case for Lando already at the restart. Lando didn’t help himself by not having a great gap on the finish line.”

Norris, for his part, also felt Piastri would have passed him anyway. “I didn’t have the best Turn 1, so hard to know how much that played a part. At the same time, Oscar came past me pretty easily. So even if I had a better Turn 1, his run and the slipstream probably still would have got me,” he said.

Norris questioned why he ran out of battery as Piastri passed him, with his engineer informing him he had discharged it on the restart rather than there being any specific issues that handicapped Norris.

“When it comes to the usage of the battery, at the restart, I understand that there was a slight anomaly, which actually happened on both sides,” Stella explained. “So, nothing that should have penalised Lando in particular compared to Oscar. We’re still checking the data, but this is the initial feedback I received.”

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

“Bye Oscar” after late pitstop

By getting out in front Piastri did himself a huge favour as the crossover point from intermediates to slicks soon approached on a drying track. As the first driver in the queue, Piastri received priority over his pit decision.

Anticipating the crossover, Piastri and his race engineer had already been debating a stop in the event of a safety car, which meant teams needing to think a couple of laps ahead. And after Lewis Hamilton was the first to pit for mediums on lap 11 and immediately set the fastest second and third sector, it was an easy decision for the Australian to pick up slicks as well.

Norris and his engineer were conducting a similar exercise, and they had the option to double stack or stay out one lap later. Neither option was particularly appealing, but that is the price he paid for having been passed by his team-mate.

“I need to ask the team. It’s tough, because you’re going to lose quite a good chunk of time doing [the double stack] as well,” Norris evaluated in hindsight. “Considering the slick tyre was so much better by that point, I think if we review it, we probably would have kicked ourselves a little bit for staying out as long as we did. I think there was enough evidence that we should have boxed early, but no one boxed that early. It was just Lewis that boxed one lap earlier than us. It was just more painful for me that Oscar got a good lap. I had to go one lap longer. That’s life.”

Norris wasn’t helped by a slow front-left tyre change, which handed Piastri an eight-second lead by the time he rejoined. Watching the pitstop back in the cooldown room before the podium ceremony, Norris sighed. “Bye, Oscar” he said in the cooldown room after the race.

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Andy Hone / LAT Images via Getty Images

A modern day Alain Prost

But Norris gave himself half a chance by putting on the hard tyres compared to medium tyres for Piastri. With Pirelli imposing a gap between compounds, Piastri’s medium tyre was the much softer C3 compared to the hard C1 for Norris. The C1 had been largely ignored by every team until the race, meaning there was much less data on it. But at that point a 30-plus lap stint on a single set of mediums seemed ambitious, with it not guaranteed that Piastri would be able to make it to the end without stopping again. That decision was dictated by Norris’ call for hards.

“For me, the medium was the safest tyre to be on at that point,” Piastri said. “But I kind of had the same plan [to take hard tyres] if I was going to be second. I knew that was going to be a likely decision for him. I felt good on the mediums for about five laps, and then when I could see that the hard on Lando’s car was not worse than the mediums, I was a bit nervous considering we had nearly 25 laps to go at that point.”

Norris actually didn’t consciously choose hard tyres to create an offset compared to his team-mate, as that was a decision taken on the pitwall. “Will [Joseph, race engineer] said, do I want the hard tyre? And I said yes. That was about it. I didn’t even know Oscar was on the medium, to be honest with you,” he admitted. “That didn’t influence my decision. I thought the hard tyre would be a slightly better tyre to the end.”

On much slower tyres Norris was pushing to bridge the eight-second gap, which gradually came down but also alarmed his own race engineer. “So Lando, these tyres are getting tricky. Need to keep the focus. Don’t push the braking as hard as we have been. You’re naturally quicker,” Joseph reassured him, with Norris not needing to go over the tyre’s thermal limit to bring the deficit to Piastri down.

After six laps Piastri reported it would be “difficult to get to the end” but as he kept his rear temperatures under control degradation was better than expected. He explained: “I had to be a bit careful, but it held on in the end much better than I feared. I had to manage a bit, but nothing special.”

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Andy Hone / LAT Images via Getty Images

Piastri may well feel he didn’t have to do anything out of the ordinary, but from an outside perspective he actually did. From his second lap at full racing speed on slicks on lap 16 to the penultimate lap, Piastri displayed a remarkable level of consistency.

He gradually lowered his lap time to a mid 1m46s and kept it there for over a metronomic 20 laps, never deviating by more than three tenths, like a modern day Alain Prost. Towards the end, he then upped his pace for three laps in response to Norris, in the knowledge his medium tyre would be fine until the end.

No regrets for Norris

Norris lap charts show a different picture, largely dictated because unlike Piastri he had to push rather than conserve. From lap 24 Norris was two to three tenths quicker on average, which would have seen him slot in behind Piastri in the closing stages. But three mistakes, which each cost him over a second, put paid to those chances as he crossed the line 3.4s in arrears.

On lap 26 Norris got loose going into Pouhon, with the subsequent correction sending him drifting into the run-off area. On lap 34 he then locked up the right-front into Turn 1, going wide in the same corner on lap 43. Singling out those three mistakes is perhaps a form of nitpicking given the low grip conditions, but it also contrasts to Piastri’s flawless race day execution.

“Lando had a couple of lock-ups in Turn 1 and also a little oversteer in Turn 9 that cost him time. I think this, overall, prevented us from having an interesting battle, possibly, at the end,” Stella acknowledged. “But in fairness, even Oscar had a couple of times in Turn 1 a little bit of a time loss. It’s very difficult when you push so much in these conditions.