Lando Norris made ground at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in his title battle with Oscar Piastri, but the debate at the end of the weekend was whether he had failed to capitalise on a major opportunity.

In a hugely uncharacteristic showing, Piastri crashed out of qualifying to leave himself ninth on the grid, botched his start and then shunted into the barriers once more on the opening lap to end the weekend pointless.

Norris failed to capitalise on Piastri’s qualifying mistake as a scrappy final lap put him seventh on the grid, before errors from both driver and team during the race saw him finish in the same position he had started from.

The upshot was that Norris gained six points on Piastri, reducing the Australian’s Drivers’ Championship lead to 25 points with seven rounds of the season remaining.

Max Verstappen claimed a second successive dominant victory from pole position to close within 69 points of Piastri, but with the calendar set to return to more favourable tracks for McLaren, it’s sensible to assume the title battle is still going to play out between the team-mates.

While Piastri had little choice but to take responsibility for his “simple lapses in judgement”, the Australian appeared to retain a positive mindset as he saw a “silver lining” in the fact his general pace hadn’t been bad.

He also said he was “not too concerned” by the threat of Verstappen, insisting that he would be “more than okay” if he can rediscover the impressive performance level he has maintained for most of the year.

Norris’ self-assessment was more surprising, with the Brit downplaying talk of a ‘missed opportunity’ and strangely insisting that he “couldn’t do anything more” in the race.

For those hoping to see Norris claim his maiden title, that claim should be concerning, given he made a significant error of his own during the race.

Caught out at the restart

Firstly, Norris had made a disappointing start as he lost a position to Isack Hadjar on the first lap before Piastri’s crash. While it certainly wasn’t ideal, these things can happen when starting in the midfield and it would be wrong to be overly critical.

However, at the Safety Car restart following Piastri’s crash, Norris was caught snoozing as he allowed the cars in front to pull away from him and the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc to pass from behind on the run to the first corner.

Sky Sports F1’s Anthony Davidson said: “From junior categories, in restart scenarios, you never want the group of cars ahead to be pulling away from you.

“You know it’s going to happen soon, you’re on and off the throttle, it’s a cat and mouse situation and you don’t want to let them go.

“He was too late on the throttle, and Leclerc’s done exactly what you should do. He gets on the racing line and has a bit more grip, and it was job done. That was a really disappointing position for Lando to lose against the Ferrari driver.”

It’s impossible to say exactly how much that moment cost him, but after Norris and Leclerc swiftly cleared Hadjar, he spent the whole first stint stuck behind the Ferrari and the Red Bull of Yuki Tsunoda.

It’s possible that if Norris had stayed ahead of Leclerc, he would have been able to pass Tsunoda on track and set about chasing down the cars further ahead, but with Leclerc receiving DRS from the Red Bull, an overtake was near on impossible.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said after the race that the MCL38 was “simply not fast enough” to overtake the likes of Tsunoda, but Norris’ restart error meant we never got to see whether he could have passed the Red Bull if it had been left exposed without DRS assistance.

The fact that Norris didn’t acknowledge the restart as a significant error is concerning in the sense that it’s something he needs to address, with restarts having the potential to be decisive during the remainder of the season.

Mixed messages after qualifying disappointment

Norris had struck a similar tone on Saturday after he was only able to take seventh in qualifying.

With Piastri having crashed out, Norris appeared to have a huge opportunity to put distance between himself and his team-mate on the grid.

There were mitigating circumstances, in that light rain was falling and Norris was without fresh soft tyres for his final run in the three minutes or so of the session that remained after Piastri’s crash.

McLaren chose to send Norris to the front of the queue at the end of the pit lane, with this ensuring his lap couldn’t been ruined by a yellow flag caused by another car and making it less likely a potential red flag would hamper him.

The downside was that Norris was first on the slippery surface, but the expectation was that he and Verstappen would fight it out for pole and share the front row.

Norris was unable to fire his tyres up and could only go seventh, but the fact he ended up 1.1 seconds off Verstappen’s pole time pointed towards a failure to maximise the grip he had available to him, while he very nearly crashed himself as he bumped the barrier at Turn 15.

Speaking after the session, Norris largely pointed to the decision to go out first at the end of qualifying as the reason he was off the pace, and said his error at Turn 15 might have been worth “a couple of positions”.

It was notable that McLaren team principal Andrea Stella defended the decision to send Norris out first, as he said: “We thought that (decision) was… it was just more a matter of executing the lap.”

The explanation for Norris’ slightly baffling self-assessment could be that he is trying to avoid being overly harsh on himself, having faced much criticism for that approach over the last couple of years.

The 25-year-old has worked hard to maintain a more positive outlook, and it would appear to be a healthier approach for him to focus on the better elements of his performance than become stuck on the negatives.

Ultimately what he says to the media isn’t the most important thing, so long as when McLaren review the weekend, he becomes aware that there certainly was more he could have done to improve his result.

Slow stop piles on the pain

There was another key moment on Sunday that Norris was undoubtedly unable to do anything about.

For a second race running, one of the tyre changes at his pit stop was botched, meaning his pit stop took four seconds, about double the amount of time a McLaren stop would usually take.

A clean stop had the potential to bring him out ahead of the battle between Liam Lawson and Leclerc, and to undercut Tsunoda, who Red Bull had also kept out on a long first stint.

The slow stop meant Norris began his final stint behind all three of them. He managed to get past Leclerc with 10 laps remaining, but couldn’t force his way past Tsunoda, who had the benefit of DRS from trailing Lawson.

Stella’s initial post-race assessment of the stop was that it “didn’t make any difference because we would have ended up pretty much in the area of Leclerc,” although he did later confirm McLaren would review the situation.

Sky Sports F1’s Bernie Collins, former head of strategy at Aston Martin, was adamant the incident had been “very costly”.

“Lando on that pit stop should have come out ahead of Leclerc and Lawson, and then he missed the opportunity to undercut Tsunoda,” Collins said. “So, actually, even without any other overtakes, he should have been P5, so that was very costly.

“You can’t just take two seconds off the finishing times. I think he would have had a much better chance at Antonelli and Sainz, if he’d been ahead of Lawson. I think McLaren are going to look at that pit stop and think it was really detrimental to their day.”

Stella’s strange denial of the pit stop having been an issue for Norris added to a confusing showing from McLaren, with the Italian perhaps suffering a rare lapse in his own judgement at the end of his team’s toughest weekend of the season.

The 2025 Formula 1 title fight continues under the lights at the Singapore Grand Prix on October 3-5, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime