Who can win the 2025 F1 title — how Verstappen can still beat Piastri and Norris

F1
October 15, 2025

Time's running out for Oscar Piastri's rivals to catch him in the 2025 F1 championship, but recent races have shown Lando Norris and Max Verstappen a path to the title

Max Verstappen walks with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris along the grid ahead of the 2025 F1 Japanese Grand Prix

Oscar Piastri leads Lando Norris and Max Verstappen in the F1 drivers' championship, and the battle is far from over

Grand Prix Photo

October 15, 2025

Will Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris emerge triumphant as this year’s Formula 1 drivers’ champion? Or could it be somebody else?

As teams arrive in Austin for the US Grand Prix, five drivers are still in with a mathematical chance of winning the title, with six rounds remaining.

Norris is within one race win of team-mate and championship leader Piastri, but Max Verstappen has been closing the gap to the McLaren duo, coming back from 104 points behind after the Dutch Grand Prix, to 63 points after Singapore.

As we show further down this article, the reigning champion still has a chance of continuing his late season charge and challenging the leaders.

The dream is all but over for the remaining two contenders though. George Russell needs a miracle to come back from his 99-point deficit, despite winning a fortnight ago in Marina Bay, while Charles Leclerc, 163 points behind Piastri, is set to drop out of the title race this weekend.

There are a maximum of 174 points remaining. That will drop to 141 after this weekend.

2025 F1 championship points after Singapore GP

Position Driver Points Gap to leader
1 Oscar Piastri 336
2 Lando Norris 314 -22
3 Max Verstappen 273 -63
4 George Russell 237 -99
5 Charles Leclerc 173 -163
Maximum points remaining: 174
6 Lewis Hamilton 125 -211

 

The 2025 F1 season so far: advantage Piastri

After a run of three victories in four races, Oscar Piastri took the world championship lead after the fifth round in Saudi Arabia and has clung onto it ever since. So far this season, he’s scored an average of 17.5 points per grand prix and seven per sprint.

If he and his rivals maintain their average scores so far this season, then Piastri is on course to win his first world championship with 462 points; 33 more than Norris.

Championship projection points after Singapore GP

Of course, Formula 1 is rarely this straightforward, but rivals are running out of time to challenge the title leader.

In 2023, Verstappen secured his third crown after the Qatar sprint race in an anticlimactic end to the championship, and the same venue will crown Piastri again this year if he and his rivals maintain their average scores.

Between the US Grand Prix and the Qatar race, four rounds later, all of Piastri’s rivals would slip too far behind the race leader to catch him, beginning with Leclerc this weekend.

Gap to Piastri vs popints remaining after SIngapore GP

Should Piastri outscore the Ferrari driver by three or more points in Saturday’s sprint race at Circuit of the Americas, then Leclerc will drop out of the title race. Russell is likely to follow two weekends later in Brazil and — again based on average scores so far this season — Verstappen would fall out of reach at the next race in Las Vegas. Norris would then be the last driver standing until the Qatar Grand Prix.

 

How Lando Norris can be F1 champion in 2025

Norris took the early lead in the title race with victory at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, as Piastri slumped to ninth when he slid off a damp track.

But the Australian then took control, winning three of the next four races to head the championship table; his cool, calm demeanour contrasting with Norris’s more emotional approach. Nowhere was this better illustrated than with Norris’s costly retirement in Montreal after he hit Piastri’s car in a fight for fourth place.

Instead of wilting, however, Norris bounced back with two race wins in a row, Cracks have now appeared in Piastri’s championship campaign, most notably when he crashed out in Baku.

It should mean that the title race is closer, but the failure of Norris’s McLaren at Zandvoort, as Piastri went on to win, means that the 22-point gap to Piastri remains exactly the same as it was after the Canadian Grand Prix.

Verstappen Norris pts gap to Piastri copy

The outlook isn’t as gloomy as it seems for Norris. In the three rounds since his Dutch Grand Prix retirement, he has gradually been moving closer to his team-mate at an average rate of four points per race.

That is a significant number: it is exactly what Norris needs to do in order to snatch the championship lead at the very final race of the season in Abu Dhabi.

As the graph below shows, if Piastri scores an average of 9 points and Norris 13 (as they have done in the past three rounds), Norris would be two points ahead when the chequered flag is waved as Yas Marina.

In this scenario, we haven’t modelled the sprint races: if the title race is so close, the results could change the course of championship.

Norris Piastri proj pts on last 3 races

 

Why Max Verstappen can still be 2025 F1 champion

In the early stages of the season, Verstappen described his car as undriveable. Now, he has an outside chance of becoming a championship contender.

Admittedly the maths isn’t in his favour, given that he needs 64 more points than Piastri in the next six race weekends to secure the title, an average of more than 10 points per round.

Impossible? Well, in the past three races, riding the wave of a Red Bull resurgence, Verstappen has scored an average of 22.6 points per grand prix, compared with Piastri’s nine.

If we add that scoring rate to the previous graph, it shows Verstappen headed for a spectacular comeback.

Top 3 proj pts on last 3 races

For any chance of this scenario playing out, Verstappen wouldn’t just need his car to have an edge over the McLarens, but would have to rely on Mercedes and Ferrari taking points from his rivals.

It wouldn’t take much to derail his trajectory either: if McLaren can shake off its recent malaise, it will be virtually impossible for Verstappen to win, because as the end of the season approaches and the available points diminish, each result can have a magnified effect.

For example, if Piastri wins both the US sprint race and Grand Prix, followed by Norris and Verstappen, the Red Bull driver would leave Austin 75 points behind and needing to claw back 15 points at every round. At that point, the game would most likely be up.

 

Who will win if there’s a draw in the 2025 F1 championship?

If two or more drivers finish the season level on points, then their final position is initially decided on the number of race victories each has.

Piastri currently has seven wins to Norris’s five and Verstappen’s four.