Should Norris have taken the points lead off Verstappen in Baku? · RaceFans

McLaren took the lead of the constructors’ championship two races ago. Do they therefore have the best combination of car, team and drivers in Formula 1 at the moment?

Arguably not. On pure single-lap pace, Red Bull’s RB20 has been closer to the best across the 18 rounds so far on average. But that is likely to change over the coming races: The MCL38 is now only slightly slower on average for the whole season and the orange team have been quicker across all of the last seven events.

So as it stands, Red Bull are no longer leading the constructors’ championship but Max Verstappen has a healthy lead in the drivers’ standings. It therefore follows that his team mate Sergio Perez is conspicuously underperforming. Sure enough, he has fallen to eighth, with every driver from the team’s rivals McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes separating them.

Lando Norris, the winner of the last race in Singapore, is leading the charge against Verstappen. But with 52 points between them his chances of taking the title are remote.

Should Norris be closer? He emerged from the summer break 78 points behind Verstappen. Facing a crucial run of four races in which he had a clear opportunity to out-score his rival, Norris did exactly that, taking points off Verstappen every time.

But he could have done more. Points went begging at Baku, due to reasons beyond his control, and Monza, where team mate Oscar Piastri finished ahead of him in second place, and either McLaren driver could have won.

How many points could Norris have scored prior to then? He has clearly missed opportunities on earlier occasions. But unpicking the consequences of, for example, dropping a wheel into a gravel trap on lap one at Spa, and determining where he would have finished 44 laps later, is always going to be subjective.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

A more robust figure can be reached by looking at the maximum score each team’s car took at each race. In Verstappen’s case he had little room for improvement: The only occasion his team mate out-scored him was when his car broke down in Australia.

Norris, however, has been out-scored by Piastri in nine of the 21 races so far (18 grands prix plus three sprint races). If Norris had consistently scored the best result of each McLaren driver as Verstappen did at Red Bull, would his deficit be much less than the 52 points it is today?

Yes. In fact, there would be no deficit: Had either McLaren driver consistently scored the team’s best result at every race – let’s call them ‘Max McLaren’ – they would be leading Verstappen by 13 points:

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

According to this analysis, had Norris not missed the opportunities to score higher results which Piastri took, he would have claimed the championship lead from Verstappen by winning the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

There are a couple of obvious caveats here, however. For example, fate conspired in such a way in Baku that Norris was potentially never going to win that race, having suffered the misfortune of catching a brief yellow flag during Q1.

More to the point, at least one of Piastri’s superior results came about because of a development in Norris’ race. This was at the Austrian Grand Prix, where Norris and Verstappen collided while fighting over the lead. That promoted Piastri to second place.

So while a crude calculation indicates Norris should be in the lead of the championship already, the reality behind those numbers doesn’t quite support that. It’s clear, however, that he could and arguably should be much closer than 52 points behind.

Piastri’s performances are giving Norris a real headache. It was recently pointed out to Piastri that he has scored the most points of any driver over the last nine races.

“I don’t believe in these calculations,” he told Auto Motor und Sport. “Some other driver has probably scored the most points from the last eight or the last ten races.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

In fact, they haven’t: The driver who has scored the most points over the last eight and ten races is Piastri. Moreover, if you extend that analysis back over the whole season, Piastri is the top points scorer more frequently than any other driver:

Significantly, the earliest point at which Piastri became the highest points-scorer in the field was 12 races ago. This was Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, where Piastri first had use of the upgrade Norris had at the preceding round in Miami, which he won.

At his current points-scoring rate, Norris is likely to fall short of catching Verstappen before the season ends. If that happens, he already has no shortage of missed opportunities which may have proved decisive.

How will the 2024 championship be decided? Examine every possible outcome using the F1 championship calculator

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Formula 1

Browse all Formula 1 articles