Revealed: Nine races that have shaped the F1 2025 title battle so far

The 2025 title race looks to be going down to the wire with Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen battling it out, but there have already been plenty of twists and turns.

A once two-horse race has added a new challenger and with four races left to go, we are taking a look at how we got here. These are the nine races that have shaped the F1 2025 title battle.

Australian Grand Prix

An obvious place to start is the very first race of the season but the Australian Grand Prix has proven to be far more influential than we realised at the time.

For starters, it established McLaren as the clear leader in terms of car performance and that the likes of Ferrari had not built on their late 2024 momentum. But what it also did was give Norris a 23-point lead over his teammate.

As rain came down in Melbourne, Piastri was within a second of his teammate who was leading the race but when both of them went off, it was Norris who made the smoother recovery.

Piastri meanwhile found himself stuck on the wet grass and did well to even rejoin the action and recover to ninth.

Fast forward seven months and now Piastri would kill for those extra points. While P1 was on the cards, even staying in second would have meant he would still lead the championship now by 15 points and perhaps with enough of a buffer to see it home.

Japanese Grand Prix

As the season went on, the race in Suzuka seemed more like a consolation win for Verstappen and just one of those times the Dutchman pushed an underwhelming car to great heights but what it has instead turned into is the key example of Verstappen never being fully out of the race.

The win in Japan was a typical Verstappen drive in that he started from pole and never really looked like giving up top spot.

The win saw him move to within one point of championship leader Norris and although he would not be able to maintain that gap, it has proven to be some crucial points in his late title bid.

Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

For much of the 2025 season, Piastri has been the driver in charge. Of the 20 race weekends we have had so far this year, he has boarded his private jet to leave the circuit top of the standings on all but five occasions.
After an up-and-down first three races, Piastri moved into a different gear from the Bahrain Grand Prix and following the end of the race in Jeddah, the Australian was ahead of Norris.

It was also a race that set the tone for how Piastri was going to be fighting. While plenty of others have shrunk under the pressure of an attacking Verstappen, a fantastic start for Piastri put him alongside the polesitter and when he was ahead at Turn 1, he got the elbows out in a move that would not be unfamiliar to the Red Bull driver.

The result was a penalty for Verstappen and Piastri being given the lead of the race, all the while Norris was down in fourth.

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Canadian Grand Prix

Plenty had been waiting for the papaya-coloured touch paper to be lit and that came for the first time in Montreal.

It was an unusual race in that McLaren were off it pace-wise, leaving Mercedes to be one and three with Verstappen in P2 but behind that, Norris and Piastri were battling for P4.

In a lengthy exchange that would have left a bead of cold sweat on the foreheads of Andrea Stella and Zak Brown, the McLaren duo were separated by a matter of inches in sector three but it came to a head at the beginning of the next lap.

Piastri braked late to save his spot at Turn 14 but it gave Norris an advantage on the pit lane straight. Piastri moved left to cover him off but Norris went for a gap that simply was not there and hit the back of his teammate before destroying his front left on the wall.

Norris was left stranded on the side of the road while Piastri made it home in P4, giving the Australian a 12-point boost over his rival.

Dutch Grand Prix

Speaking of big swings for one of the McLaren drivers…

As a sign of how reliable modern F1 cars are, mechanical issues have not really played a part in the title race except for in Zandvoort when Norris’s engine gave up the ghost with seven laps to go.

The cause was an oil leak with the engine automatically shutting itself down to protect further damage but it meant another sizeable points gain for Piastri.

Azerbaijan Grand Prix

For much of the season, Piastri has looked completely nonplussed about being on the cusp of a potential first world title but the once unflappable Australian showed his first signs of being human in Baku.

A silly error of a false start was followed by a crash into the barriers and him out of the race.

What was thought of as a bad day at the office has instead become the start of a trend and while his races since have not been as catastrophic as Baku, Piastri’s form has never recovered.

Italian Grand Prix

If Verstappen does go on to the title, the Italian Grand Prix will be looked back on as the moment everything changed.

While others, including McLaren, had given up on upgrades by this point in the year, Red Bull brought a new floor to Monza and it immediately brought results.

Having gone eight races without a win, Verstappen’s victory in Italy was the first of three wins in the next four races and something that took his title hopes from fanciful to realistic.

Red Bull brought a further adaptation to the floor in Mexico, although it did not have as big an impact as the Monza version, but the upgrades have changed the shape of this title race.

United States Grand Prix

When asked about his title chances, Verstappen said he would need a “perfect” end to the year and he produced one of those weekends in Austin.

With it being a sprint weekend, the Dutchman took the maximum 33 points on offer to bring the title gap down to 40 points.

Verstappen will need a few more weekends like Austin if he is to make it to No. 5 this season.

Mexican Grand Prix

As the chequered flag flew in Mexico City, the World Drivers’ Championship had a new name on top for the first time in 189 days.

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk about the momentum of Verstappen and it has almost been forgotten that Norris is still very much in the title fight.

He reminded everyone that was the case with a perfect weekend in Mexico. He qualified on pole with a 0.262-second gap to the rest of the field and did not put a foot wrong to lead every lap of the race.

Significantly, it moved him ahead of Piastri in the championship standings and saw the momentum swing his way ahead of the final four races of the season.

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