Welcome to our live coverage for qualifying for the 2025 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. The Formula One world drivers’ championship has been a two-horse race for a while now, but last weekend at Zandvoort was when Oscar Piastri took a decisive step towards the crown.
Piastri was leading in the closing stages when his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris retired from a close second. The Australian’s lead heading into the race was nine points, had he won and Norris finished second then it would have moved to 16 points. With Norris’s mechanical DNF, the gap with nine rounds remaining is now 34 points.
That is not insurmountable for Norris, of course. But, assuming he and Piastri finish first and second in the next nine rounds (excluding the sprints) then Norris would need to win seven to Piastri’s two to claim back those 34 points. If Piastri wins three and finishes second in six, with Norris doing the reverse, then the Briton has only clawed back 21.
That is the scale of the task that faces Norris. He needs Piastri to have some kind of bad luck or make a significant mistake of his own between now and the end of the season.
How do things look at Monza? Well, McLaren look just about the fastest team but not by the margins we have come to expect. In final practice earlier today Norris was fastest, but only by 0.021sec ahead of the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc. Oscar Piastri was third, 0.165sec off Norris’s time with Max Verstappen and George Russell all within a tenth of the Aussie.
