Piastri under the pump as Norris’s momentum balloons

Oscar Piastri returns at Spa with scars from Silverstone and a shrinking lead, needing to reassert control in McLaren’s intra-team duel.

Takes a minute to win The Everest. Three minutes for the Melbourne Cup. Four days for a golf major. A fortnight for a tennis major. Three weeks to prise oneself from the peloton at a Tour de France. Six months to raise an AFL flag. And nine long, lab­orious, marathon, painstaking months to become the Formula 1 world champion.

No athletes travel faster nor arrive so slowly at their primary result. It seems forever ago that Oscar Piastri hit skid row at the Australian Grand Prix. His appearance in Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix is his 13th commitment of a 24-race season that ­finishes on the last Sunday in ­November.

The second half of his campaign gets under way at Spa after a three-week break when F1’s school was out for the European summer.

Where are we up to? Piastri’s commanding 22-point lead has been slashed to eight points after his mercurial McLaren teammate, Lando Norris, wrestled back momentum with back-to-back wins at Spielberg and Silverstone. Piastri was ripped off at the British Grand Prix, where he was rattled for the first time this ­season, and desperately needs to reassert authority over a teammate and rival who is rediscovering his mojo after he lost the plot, and the race, while crashing with Piastri three chapters ago at the Canadian Grand Prix.

“I think Montreal was actually a nice moment for all of us, in hindsight,” says McLaren boss Zak Brown. “It just took the air out of the balloon and we got it over with. Everyone was talking about it but I feel like it’s raised everyone’s confidence and comfort. It happened, it was a mistake. We’ll see other incidents in the near future but they’ll be racing mistakes and racing mistakes are going to happen.”

Brown adds: “We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing as a team. Treat them equally, fairly, transparently, good communications. If we can continue to build a gap, then we want it to be up to them to decide who wins the championship. They’re both very clean drivers, so what’s cool is you don’t feel like one’s going to run one off the track. They’re going to fight hard. Again, mistakes will happen along the way, but I think it’s going to be an epic battle down to the final race. May the best man win.”

The normally unflappable ­Piastri was flapping like a hummingbird’s wings when he received his 10-second penalty for allegedly erratic braking behind the safety car at Silverstone. The verdict felt like the sort of hometown decision one might get from a whistle-happy ref in a rugby Test at Twickenham. He’s had three weeks to stew on a certain victory being taken away and handed to Norris as Britain rejoiced at having a British winner from a British team at the British Grand Prix.

Oscar Piastri during the British Grand Prix where he was penalised after an incident with the safety car Picture: Getty Images

We’ll learn a lot about Piastri’s mettle at Spa. “Apparently you can’t brake behind the safety car anymore,” he says of his Silverstone punishment. “I mean, I did it for five laps before that. I think there’s been a lot of learning on both sides. I still have my feelings about it, but it’s in the past now and I’ve moved on. It was a manoeuvre that had been done before, by myself in some cases, but by other drivers as well in the past, in an identical manner. Obviously if it needs to be penalised now, then that’s fine. I know that for the future. But obviously immediately after the race, I was frustrated.”

They’re in Spa but everyone’s still talking about Silverstone. “Lando has done his job. He’s done it fair and square, no faults at all of his own,” says McLaren principal Andrea Stella says. “He drove very well, he drove fast, he found himself in the lead and he won the British Grand Prix. I think he could completely and fully enjoy this great experience and this immense joy. At the same time, we shared a little bit of bitterness that surely Oscar has been experiencing. But Oscar is a very tough guy and he will use this situation as extra motivation for the remainder of the season.”

The Belgian Grand Prix starts at 11pm on Sunday (AEST). Norris is sounding dangerously upbeat. “I feel like I’ve climbed a little bit back to where I was,” he says. “The most positive thing from those two weekends and wins was that the pace was better from the off. I was more comfortable with the car and in understanding how to get the most pace from it. At times that brings more of a smile to my face than winning the race itself because it’s progress. It’s seeing progress. It’s a very rewarding thing. I know there’s still more I need to get but I feel better than what I did. Do I feel more confident that I can have more performances like that? Yes.”