2025 Austrian Grand Prix

The McLaren was super-fast around the Red Bull Ring, even by the team’s 2025 standards. Lando Norris was also supremely well-tuned-in to one of his favourite tracks. Those two factors soared his confidence into an upward spiral. The new tweaked front suspension introduced in Montreal was giving him the feedback he felt he’d previously lacked in this car – and it was one of those weekends where no-one got close to him, not in qualifying at least when he was 0.5sec clear of the field.

Team-mate Oscar Piastri could point to not having got his final Q3 lap in because of unfortunately-timed yellow flags (for a spectacular 720-degree Pierre Gasly spin out of the final corner). But run for run, he was always a vital tenth or two behind Norris here.

But in the race those tenths don’t matter so much. All you needed to race Norris here was another McLaren. Because then even if your pace wasn’t quite as good, you could use the powerful lap time boost of DRS here to stay with him and force him to use up his battery defending from you. So that’s what he did for all the first stint, Norris unable to escape that invisible bit of elastic connecting the two cars.