The 2025 Formula 1 championship race is unfolding with unpredictable twists, and the recent Azerbaijan Grand Prix has just added another dramatic chapter. The events on the Baku street circuit not only reshaped the title fight but also ignited a fiery debate, especially after McLaren made a bold comparison between their young talent, Oscar Piastri, and the legendary Michael Schumacher. However, while the spotlight focuses on the internal dynamics at McLaren, another name is quietly rising, threatening to shatter all predictions: Max Verstappen.

Disaster in Baku: A Missed Opportunity and Costly Errors

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix was a weekend of starkly contrasting emotions for McLaren. Lando Norris, presented with a golden opportunity to significantly close the gap on his teammate Oscar Piastri, failed to capitalize. Piastri, the championship leader, made a critical error, crashing out on the very first lap and opening a wide door for Norris. Yet, Lando could only manage a seventh-place finish, securing a meager six points and reducing Piastri’s lead to just 25 points. He found himself stuck behind other cars, unable to make the necessary breakthrough.

Norris was quick to point to Saturday’s qualifying session as the root cause of his struggles. He argued that overtaking in Baku was nearly impossible, and his qualifying result had effectively sealed his fate for the main race. Indeed, he finished exactly where he started in a chaotic qualifying session marked by a record six red flags due to a series of crashes in treacherous conditions. Both McLaren drivers struggled: Piastri crashed in Q3, ending up ninth on the grid, while Norris could only secure seventh. He blamed his decision to go out first in the final three minutes of qualifying, suggesting that drivers who ran later benefited from better track conditions. However, going out first also protected him from the risk of yet another red flag. Nevertheless, the time he set simply wasn’t good enough.

When asked if it was a missed opportunity, Norris was defiant: “No, because I still did everything I could.” McLaren’s Team Principal, Andrea Stella, agreed, dismissing the idea that the timing of the lap was an issue. “We are still happy with this decision to run first,” Stella said. “We knew that we might have given away a little bit of lap time, but for us, the most important thing was actually to make sure that we could deliver a robust lap.” However, Stella also alluded to a “little misjudgment by Lando” where he touched the wall, implying that Norris hadn’t delivered a clean enough lap to truly capitalize on Piastri’s mistake.

Piastri and the Schumacher Comparison: A Cold Shower or High Praise?

After Piastri’s troubled weekend in Baku—which included clipping the wall in Friday practice, crashing in Saturday’s qualifying, and then again in Sunday’s race—many might assume the pressure of the title fight is beginning to weigh on the McLaren drivers. Andrea Stella, however, was quick to dispel that notion. He left Baku with no worries about Piastri, even making a rather astonishing comparison.

Drawing on his experience working with F1 greats like Michael Schumacher, Kimi Räikkönen, and Fernando Alonso during his time as an engineer at Ferrari, Stella shared, “I’ve worked with multiple champion drivers, and in a season, every season, even the most dominant, even by one of the best drivers in the history of Formula 1 like Michael Schumacher, I have seen events like this.” He emphasized that the most important takeaway is the learning, as things can become difficult for various reasons, and any misjudgment of the available grip gets punished severely.

This is high praise for Piastri, and it’s hard to argue with Stella’s perspective. Of the two McLaren drivers, Piastri has been the one impressing with his flawless performances, even if he hasn’t always been as outright fast as Lando Norris. His mistake-free drives are precisely why he holds a 25-point lead over his teammate. Errors like the one Lando made in Canada have been the key difference between the two drivers so far.

While Stella compared Piastri to Schumacher, perhaps a parallel with Räikkönen would be more fitting. The 2007 world champion was nicknamed “The Iceman” for his incredibly calm demeanor off the track. Piastri has displayed a similarly unflappable nature this season, both in and out of the car. McLaren understands just how crucial this trait is for Oscar as a driver.

“These errors that we’ve seen on Oscar’s side, they’re definitely uncharacteristic,” Stella added. “I think Oscar has been the most solid driver in the 2025 campaign so far. And for what I could see, even with multi-champion drivers, sometimes you have a weekend in which it’s all about learning. I think one of the strongest features of Oscar is how rapidly he learns, how rapidly he improves, and how he can come back stronger.”

Piastri will need to learn from this weekend quickly, because with only seven races left in the season, any more mistakes of this magnitude could be terminal for his championship hopes, especially with Max Verstappen looming in the background.

The Verstappen Threat: The Spoiler to McLaren’s Party?

While McLaren has been able to “do their own thing” for much of this season, letting their drivers battle for the championship amongst themselves, Verstappen is becoming a looming problem. Over the last two race weekends, he has proven he cannot be forgotten. After Piastri’s disastrous weekend in Baku, the four-time world champion slashed the gap to the top of the standings to 69 points.

While that is still a significant margin with just seven races remaining, the math shows that Max needing to gain 10 more points than Oscar in every remaining race is not impossible. While many fans and the media had written off anyone but the McLaren drivers for the title, Lando Norris insists that McLaren never thought that way internally. “It’s not often that they’re slow, so people need to stop being so surprised that they’re quick,” he said. “Max was winning races already at the beginning of the year. The whole season they’ve been quick, and the Red Bull’s been good. They’ve brought some upgrades to Monza which seemed to have helped them even more. So I’m not surprised. We know that they’re an incredibly strong team with one of the best drivers ever in Formula 1, so we expect nothing less.”

Lando went on to say that he expects Verstappen to be a constant problem for him and Piastri. However, Max himself remains far from convinced. “I don’t rely on hope,” Max stated. “But it’s seven rounds left, 69 points is a lot, so I personally don’t think about it, but I just go race by race, doing what I have been doing basically the whole season. Just trying to do the best we can… and then after Abu Dhabi, we’ll know.”

The reality of the situation is that for Verstappen to win the championship, he needs to win the majority of the remaining races and rely on Piastri having another bad weekend or two. Max’s back-to-back wins have also come at very similar tracks: Baku and Monza are both heavily dependent on top speed and punctuated by slow-speed corners. McLaren’s strength lies in the medium to high-speed corners, where they are simply much stronger than every other car.

If—and it is a big if—Verstappen can snatch a win in Singapore at the start of October, a track where McLaren should be at its strongest, then perhaps the title challenge is truly on. Can he do it? Or is the championship still McLaren’s to lose? The answer will only be revealed as the thrilling 2025 season races to its conclusion.