By 
The super-close contest between the McLaren team mates last year would have made for a thrilling world championship fight even if Max Verstappen hadn’t got involved.
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Now in their fourth season as team mates, with a completely different type of McLaren to get used to, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have been fairly well-matched on the whole. However in individual races their relative performance has varied, most notably in Hungary last weekend, where Norris was clearly much quicker.
Norris has been on a strong run lately, out-qualifying his team mate for the last five rounds in a row. Though it bears pointing out that Piastri missed first practice at the last round and was badly baulked by Lewis Hamilton when he began his final run.
It took Piastri until the third round of the season merely to start a grand prix, suffering a mortifying pre-race crash at home, then retiring before the start along with Norris in Shanghai. He rebounded magnificently at Suzuka and might have won had it not been for the timing of a Safety Car period.
McLaren have had further technical trouble since then: Norris had back-to-back failures while Piastri’s retirement in Hungary capped a frustrating race where a wayward backmarker had already cost him the lead. Piastri had a rough race in Canada as well, where both McLaren drivers paid the price for a tactical gamble which backfired.
It was therefore fitting that Norris delivered the team’s first win as F1 headed into the summer break. His 36-point lead over Piastri looks like a fair reflection of their relative performances given the various setbacks both drivers have suffered. The world champion holds the upper hand so far but Piastri is keeping him honest as always.
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| AUS | CHI | JAP | MIA | CAN | MON | SPA | AUT | GBR | BEL | HUN | ||
| Norris | Q | |||||||||||
| R |
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Unrepresentative comparisons omitted. Negative value: Norris was faster; Positive value: Piastri was faster
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