Q&A: Norris’ title hopes – and Antonelli ‘like an artichoke’

Oscar Piastri took a firm grip on the drivers ‘ championship by winning the Dutch Grand Prix as McLaren team-mate and title rival Lando Norris retired.

Isack Hadjar, a 20-year-old driver for Racing Bulls, came third in the Formula 1 title race, trailing only Max Verstappen.

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc both crashed out in the Ferrari race, which was miserable. They will be hoping for much better on home soil at this weekend’s Grand Prix in Italy.

After Norris’ tragic retirement in Zandvoort reduced their lead to nine points, does Oscar Piastri appear much more like the championship favorite? – Andrew

After winning the Dutch Grand Prix, Norris acknowledged that the oil leak that led to his retirement from Zandvoort had “only made it harder for me and put me under more pressure”

With nine races left, Piastri has a clear lead over the competition, especially given that the driver has been so strong this year and is “good in pretty much every situation,” as Norris puts it.

That points lead is the equivalent of a win and a fifth place. To regain the championship lead, Norris would need to win the next five races, with Piastri coming in second each time.

So it’s obvious that Piastri is now a stronger favorite than he was before, but it could still be said that he was a respectably strong favorite in any case.

It’s hard to think of anything Piastri has done wrong since he and Norris spun together at the Australian Grand Prix at the start of the season – an incident from which Norris was able to recover to win, but Piastri was left a ninth-place finish, because of where each ended up when they encountered a late-race downpour.

If Norris had finished second rather than retired, Piastri already had a nine-point lead heading to Zandvoort, which would have increased to 16. Also worth noting is that Piastri could have already had a 27-point advantage.

His penalty in Silverstone was controversial, and some believe that by rights he should have won in Hungary.

Norris was able to recover from losing ground at the start and defeat Piastri there thanks to McLaren’s policy of allowing its drivers to choose different strategies to try to beat their team-mates.

Piastri himself resisted feeling unfairly treated, but other team members believe he had a right under the rules of standard team-management, which typically favor the lead driver with strategy, given seniority in other teams.

Despite Norris ‘ strong recovery since McLaren made a front-suspension tweak in Canada to help him with his feeling for the front axle, Piastri has unquestionably been McLaren’s more consistent performer this season, having impressively stepped up his game since last year.

Having said that, Piastri’s lead is undoubtedly unbreakable. In earlier circumstances, smaller advantages were reversed.

In 2007, for example, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen was 17 points behind – the equivalent of 43 now, as there was a different points system – with two races to go, and still beat McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton to the title.

With seven races left in 2012, Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso held a 39-point lead over the other drivers’, but Vettel managed to resurrect and win the title. Vettel had a significant car advantage, but Alonso had some unfortunate luck.

And in 2014 and 2016, Lewis Hamilton several times recovered large gaps to team-mate Nico Rosberg. Successfully in 2014, and in 2016 only due to an engine failure while he was leading in Malaysia.

It is still under the control of Norris. And as he put it: “It’s almost a big enough gap now that I can just chill out about it and just go for it”.

Would Isack Hadjar’s appointment to the senior team hurt his career if he was called up to compete against the second Red Bull and does so admirably and outperforming him? – Bob

Hadjar was already in with a decent shout of being promoted to Red Bull alongside Max Verstappen next year, even before his outstanding performance at the Dutch Grand Prix.

Since Max Verstappen has destroyed every team-mate since Daniel Ricciardo left at the end of 2018, and Hadjar will only be in his second year of football, the argument is lost on him.

Anyone who is that raw would be hard-pressed to accept Verstappen.

But the other options might not look that appealing to Red Bull.

Yuki Tsunoda must up his game quickly if he wants to make a compelling case for Red Bull to keep him since he was promoted in place of Liam Lawson after two races this year.

It’s unlikely that Lawson will be able to compete in the senior team in the future. And of their current drivers in F1, that only leaves Hadjar.

Red Bull prefers to avoid their driver pool, but otherwise there is no one to watch out for in this situation.

The decision would be decided in their own time, team principal Laurent Mekies said on Sunday.

How refreshing to watch the Dutch Grand Prix without being constantly compared to “track limits.” It makes for a better spectacle! When will some of the other sterile tracks notice? – Dean

Zandvoort, which hosts the Dutch Grand Prix, is what is known in motorsport as an “old-school track”.

That implies a circuit that has history, was created a few decades ago, and has characteristics that many more recent circuits do not.

The track feels like it is a part of its surroundings rather than as if it were built on top of it because of the perception that the layout is a continuation of the natural contours of the land. That is in addition to jeopardy created by features such as a relatively narrow track, walls that are relatively close to the circuit, and grass rather than asphalt surrounding it.

Zandvoort’s layout severely tests drivers’ abilities, and it’s fast and demanding. A driver’s error is typically punished for it, which results in drama and incidents.

The drivers generally much prefer this type of track to more modern ones. Suzuka, Spa-Francorchamps, Montreal, Silverstone, and other well-known examples include street races like Monaco, of course.

This includes track restrictions, especially when grass lines a track rather than asphalt runoffs.

It’s highly unlikely, because of the importance of safety, that any new road courses will be designed in the old style.

F1 bosses have started making changes to tracks to address the issue of track limits now that it has been acknowledged as a problem.

So you might have seen, for instance, artificial or artificial grasses or gravel that are positioned directly off the track to separate it from the asphalt-making blocks that make up the new run-off areas.

Kimi Antonelli: Is she still the generationally recognizable talent she once was? – Martin

Because they admired Kimi Antonelli’s natural talent and potential as a future superstar, Mercedes decided to quickly place him in F1 this year.

Before he made his debut, everyone in Formula 1 had been told about how incredible of a talent he had.

It’s fair to say, though, that he has had a rocky start to his career. In a paddock where there are undoubtedly those who are starting to question whether Antonelli really has the future Mercedes hoped he would have. F1 is a difficult environment.

After a strong performance in Miami, where he took pole in the sprint race and out-qualified team-mate George Russell for the grand prix, Antonelli’s season got off to a good start. He continued to make steady progress through the first races.

But then his momentum was affected when Mercedes introduced a new rear suspension on the car. In Canada, Russell won and Antonelli won his first podium. However, it changed the car’s handling in subsequent turns and shook Antonelli’s faith.

Mercedes reverted to their previous suspension for the Hungarian Grand Prix, and the drivers reported the car was much more predictable again.

However, Antonelli had a difficult weekend in the Netherlands, with a minor accident in first practice and a mistake in the race that caused Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari to lose.

After the race, Toto Wolff, the Mercedes F1 team’s manager, stated that he still had “100% faith in him in the long term.” He acknowledged his error.

Wolff said: “When we made it clear last year in Monza that we would give him the opportunity, it was also saying that we would give him a year of learning, and there would be moments where we’d tear our hair out, and there would be other moments of brilliance. And that pretty much sums it up, in my opinion.

It’s obvious that he’s getting off the wrong foot for the weekend with his FP1 mistake. And then in the race, these moments of great driving. He was behind the McLaren, the quickest car, caught up, and then again, involved in an accident that unfavorably ended Charles’ and Kimi’s races.

“There were ups and downs, which this season had to be expected.” And every one of those days is going to be a learning for next year.