Piastri, Norris and the 66-Point Gap: A Warning from Someone Who Once Sat in the Cockpit

Jolyon Palmer spent a decade at the highest level of motorsport before he ever sat in front of a microphone. That matters, and I am not going to pretend it does not. When a former driver who raced in the same technical system for more than thirty Grands Prix speaks about a currently active driver, you are not listening to a television commentator reading a classification sheet. You are listening to someone who once felt the machine underneath him, who once felt the rear tyres slide at the entry to Turn 3 at Austin, and who knows exactly what that feeling says about a driver.

But I must also be honest with myself: Palmer is now a writer, a pundit, a voice on a podcast. And a voice in that position always carries a weight we must weigh rather than swallow whole. His story about Oscar Piastri on the F1 Nation podcast is not a leaked inside scoop. It is not a contract negotiation being steered in a particular direction. It is a judgement. A reasoned judgement from someone who was once inside the cockpit, and therefore it deserves to be dissected to its core rather than quoted and discarded.

And that judgement, when I first heard it, made me stop in the middle of a rainy evening in London. Because it touched a question I have carried for years, ever since the night I sat in the stands at the Stade Louis II in Monaco at sixteen, taking notes on every move of a boy nobody remembered. That question is: how do you know how good a driver truly is, when the car, the team, and the media narrative are all pulling you in different directions?

I once believed in the spreadsheet, until the spreadsheet was torn apart by a counter-attack. The story of Piastri right now is one of those stories where the numbers are shouting something very clearly, and my job is to check whether the shout is real, or just the echo of an empty room.

Context: The man who was supposed to be the heir

To understand why Palmer's comment carries weight, we must remember who Piastri was. Oscar Piastri did not walk into Formula 1 through a back door. He won Formula 3, then Formula 2, consecutively, in two straight years. That is a record very few achieve, and it placed him in a very small group seen as the raw material of a future champion. When he joined McLaren, the question was not whether he would learn the trade. It was whether he would learn to win.

And in one half-season, he did exactly that. He fought for the championship. He won races, stood on podiums, and made the entire paddock redraw its mental map of power within the team. People began to speak of him in the language reserved for heirs: the second coming of a great Australian champion, could he do what Mark Webber did not. That is a height anyone would want to reach, and also a height from which anyone can fall painfully.

Then the following season came. And instead of stepping up a level, Piastri stalled. He finished eighth at the Spanish Grand Prix. He sits seventh in the standings with one hundred and twenty points, while his teammate Lando Norris sits fourth with one hundred and eighty-six points. The gap is sixty-six points. Sixty-six points in a single season, in the same car, the same team, the same set of engineers, the same wind tunnel. That is a cut you cannot smooth over with soft explanations.

And in that context, McLaren is said not to be in the championship fight. This matters in two ways. First, it reduces external pressure on the team. Second, and this is the point Palmer emphasises, it reduces the scrutiny on Piastri. Because if McLaren were in the title fight, every eighth-place finish would be dissected in front of the entire paddock. But when the team is outside that fight, an eighth place is just a line in the results, a small sigh, something nobody wants to mention.

Palmer uses a very sharp comparison: in a different situation, Piastri would be viewed the way George is. George here is almost certainly George Russell, under the pressure of a title fight elsewhere, with an entirely different set of expectations. Palmer's point is clear: Piastri is protected by the silence of a team no longer fighting for the title, and if that team were fighting for the title, his story would be told in a completely different voice.

That is the context. And it brings us to the core of the matter.

Core: When the car is not in the driver's hands

There is one line in what Palmer said that I have listened to again and again. He said Piastri is not as comfortable as Norris at sliding the car. On the surface, that sounds like a small technical remark. To me, it is the heart of the entire story. Because it is not about raw speed. It is about the fit between a human and a machine.

In Formula 1, there is what engineers call the operating window of a car, and in a driver's language, it is the band of balance the car will tolerate before it betrays you. Some drivers like a stable rear, pushing the car into the corner and trusting the rear to follow. Others prefer a slightly looser rear, enjoying the sensation of the rear sliding out and then gathering it back with steering and throttle. Neither style is more correct. But there is fit and there is misfit.

If Palmer is right, then Norris belongs to the second group, the group that feels comfortable when the rear talks to them, and Piastri does not. And that means that at tracks where the tyres lose grip, where the surface is smoother and the track temperature lower, where the rear is ready to slide without being asked, Norris has a natural advantage that Piastri must fight to offset. Those are tracks like Austin. Like Mexico. And possibly street circuits like Baku, where the tyres never reach their ideal temperature and the driver lives in a state of constant imbalance.

I remember a morning in Austin, watching from afar, and realising something timing sheets never say. Not everyone reacts the same way to the same circuit. While Norris entered corners with a controlled slide, dragging the rear over the apex and gathering it on exit, Piastri seemed to turn in slightly too early, correct mid-corner, and lose a fraction on exit. None of it shows on the timing screens. But all of it shows in the tenths accumulated across a lap. And it shows most clearly when the car is pushed outside its comfort zone.

The terrifying beauty of this sport lies there. Without an audience, I hear the breath of the ball clearly. When the roar of the crowd does not drown it out, when you must listen to the tyres themselves, the gap between two men driving the same car becomes impossible to hide. That is why the teammate benchmark is the cleanest measurement this sport has. No dataset is better than a man sitting beside you, driving the same car, beating you consistently.

But wait. I must stop here and say that if I stopped at saying Piastri is slower than Norris, I would betray myself. Because the story is not a story about speed. It is a story about stability, about repeatability, about the percentage of time a driver can be the best version of himself. And that is when the sixty-six points begin to speak.

Look at the history. Piastri has been at McLaren for about three and a half years. Palmer says that during that time, only half a season saw him reach champion level. The rest of the time, he was the second driver, in a sense, behind Norris. And this is the worrying part. Not that he lost to Norris in one race. But that he only played at champion level for a small fraction of a career now stretching beyond three years.

I recall a lesson from a transfer window, reading hundreds of rumours and realising that what truly defines a driver is not his peak but his floor. Piastri's peak has been seen. He showed he can win when everything clicks. But his floor, the level he falls back to when everything is imperfect, remains a question. And in a season where his team no longer fights for the title, that floor becomes the only thing left to measure.

That is where Norris differs. Norris sits fourth with one hundred and eighty-six points, took pole in Spain, and built a lead before a Virtual Safety Car arrived at the worst moment and wrecked his race. That matters. Because it tells us that Norris, this season, is at a level where he produces results even when luck is not on his side. Piastri does not. He finished eighth at that same event, not because of a strategy incident, not because of a pit-stop error, not because of a collision, but simply because he lacked the pace to be closer to where the race was being decided.

And here I must be careful. Because the spreadsheet can be torn in both directions. Sixty-six points, seven places, an eighth in Spain. Those numbers are clear. But they can be read two ways. One: Piastri is not good enough. Two: the car has been developed in a direction that makes it hard for him to show his full ability.

The second reading has a real basis. McLaren, like every team, develops its car in a direction. And that direction is usually influenced by which driver is on better form, giving better technical feedback, scoring more points. When Norris consistently finishes ahead, it is not hard to imagine the car gradually being shaped toward the operating window Norris prefers. And if that happens, it is not a conspiracy. It is a natural process. A process that, from Piastri's perspective, can become a spiral.

I have seen this before. From contempt to doffing the cap: that is the longest journey football can give us. But it has a version of its own in this sport, and it is colder. When you are slower than your teammate, you lose credibility in the engineering room. When you lose credibility, the car is developed in another direction. When the car goes another way, you become slower still. And so it continues, until people no longer remember that you won Formula 3 and Formula 2 back to back.

That is why Palmer's comment is not merely a form assessment. It is a warning about a cycle. A cycle that reproduces itself, and that requires a proactive act, almost a reprogramming, to break.

And this is when I recall Andrea Stella, said to have spoken about the limitations on low-grip tracks. If the team principal has spoken about it, then it is no longer a pundit's remark. It is a reality the team faces. A driver uncomfortable on low-grip tracks means the team must work harder to find a setup that helps him, and sometimes that setup makes the car slower for the other driver. A problem with no perfect solution.

Contrarian: Where could I be wrong?

I have spent years telling myself I must be willing to state where I might be wrong. And here is where I might be wrong.

First, I am trusting a story told by one person. Palmer is a former driver, but he is also a pundit, and a pundit needs a story to tell. A story of contrast between a shining driver and a stalling one always sells better than a story about the complexity of variables. I am not saying Palmer is inventing. I am saying his story has an attractive arc, and that arc may omit a few details.

Second, the sliding story may be an oversimplification. In this sport, no driver cannot slide a car. They all slide every time the tyres degrade. The difference lies in how comfortable they feel doing it, and how much speed they pay to do it. If it is a difference of degree rather than ability, the story is not Piastri cannot, but Piastri pays more. And that difference matters, because it changes the diagnosis and the cure.

Third, I am judging Piastri in a context where Palmer himself says this year's car suits him less than last year's. Last year's cars suited him a little more until the low-grip tracks. That means Piastri is not only fighting Norris. He is fighting this car, a new set of regulations, a narrower operating window. And if so, comparing his points with Norris this season is, to some degree, an unfair comparison. Not because the points mean nothing. But because the points do not tell the whole story.

Fourth, and this is what I thought about most that evening: is this story dominated by a bias about Australian greatness? People spoke of the second coming of a great Australian champion, compared him to Mark Webber. And when we place the burden of a legend on a young man's shoulders, disappointment always arrives faster and heavier than reality. Perhaps Piastri was never the heir people assumed. Perhaps he is a very good driver, a top-class driver who can win many races and once fought for a championship, but not necessarily a world champion. And if that is true, the problem is not Piastri. The problem is the expectations we placed on him.

The Mark Webber question deserves a pause. Webber was a very good driver. He won races, fought for championships, and was tied to one of the strongest teams in an era dominated by another great driver. When someone compares a young driver to Webber, they are saying something very specific. They are saying: we do not see a world champion. We see someone who can be very good, very respectable, but not the man at the top.

I do not know whether that is true of Piastri. But I know that in my experience, such comparisons never appear randomly. They appear when someone has seen a pattern. And that pattern, according to Palmer, is inconsistency. Half a season at champion level in over three years. That is a pattern. And patterns, in this sport, are more reliable than flashes.

But I want to push the counter-argument one step further. What if that very pattern is the result of a technical cause we do not see? What if McLaren's car has been developed in a direction that makes it increasingly hard for anyone who is not Norris? And what if, in another season, with another car, Piastri showed a completely different pattern?

That is why I do not want to end this story with a verdict. I want to end it with a set of tests. Because in this sport, any claim has value only if it can be falsified. And a claim that cannot be falsified is, by definition, not a claim about reality. It is a belief.

I do not want to write about beliefs. I want to write about what can be proven wrong.

What I actually look at when I judge a 66-point gap

For years, I have built a way of reading numbers I believe is more useful than the standings. And I want to share it, because it applies directly to the Piastri case.

When two drivers are in the same team, the points gap is only the surface. Beneath the surface is the lap-time gap, in units. And that gap, to be meaningful, must be read in context. If the average lap-time gap is two tenths and appears consistently at every type of circuit, it is a fundamental speed problem. If that gap appears only at certain types of circuit, it is a fit problem. And fit, unlike fundamental speed, can be changed.

With Piastri, the hypothesis Palmer offers is that the gap appears most at low-grip tracks. Austin, Mexico. If that is true, it changes the whole diagnosis. It means that at high-grip tracks, these two drivers are far closer than the standings suggest. And it means Piastri's problem is not that he is not fast enough, but that he cannot access his speed in a specific type of condition.

That is a different kind of problem. And it has a different kind of solution. It requires a bespoke setup, a change in aerodynamic load distribution, and sometimes a change in how the driver approaches corners. It does not require the driver to become someone else. It requires the team to understand its driver better.

But there is another variable I always track, rarely mentioned: the gap in qualifying versus the gap in the race. If a driver is weak in qualifying but strong in the race, his problem is extracting the maximum over one lap on fresh tyres and low fuel. If he is strong in qualifying but weak in the race, his problem is tyre management and long-run pace. In Spain, Norris took pole and Piastri finished eighth. We do not have enough data to separate the two factors. But the contrast between pole and eighth, after accounting for the Virtual Safety Car that wrecked Norris's race, remains too large to be explained by luck alone.

That is my emphasis. Luck plays a role. The Virtual Safety Car in Spain is a perfect example of how luck can shape a race. Norris built a lead, then the VSC appeared, and suddenly all his advantage was erased. That is not Piastri's fault, and it is not Norris's fault. It is the nature of the sport. Applause in an empty stadium is more honest than the song of the crowd. And in a race shaped by such moments, we must be very careful drawing conclusions from a single event.

That is why I say sixty-six points is a signal, not a verdict. A signal strong enough to worry about, clear enough to notice, but not enough to close the story. Because the story of a young driver at a top team is never decided by one season. It is decided by how he responds to that season.

The name behind the story: The truth about being called second

There is an aspect of this story I want to address frankly, because it is often overlooked in performance discussions.

In this sport, being a second driver at a top team is not terrible by absolute standards. It means you still drive one of the fastest cars in the world. It means you can still win races, stand on podiums, earn a contract most drivers dream of. But by your own standards, if you were once seen as the heir, becoming second is a failure.

And that brings me back to the George comparison. If Palmer is right that Piastri would be viewed the way George is if McLaren were fighting for the title, then he is talking about an asymmetry in how we scrutinise drivers. When a team is fighting for the title, every mistake by every driver is dissected in the light of a championship within reach. When a team is no longer fighting, those mistakes sink. And that means the same performance can be judged two entirely different ways, depending only on whether your team is fighting for the title.

That is an uncomfortable truth about this sport, and it always has been. Scrutiny is not distributed evenly. It concentrates where the light is.

But I want to say something else too. If our scrutiny is skewed, that is a reason to be more careful with our assessments, not to ignore the signals. Sixty-six points is still sixty-six points. An eighth place in Spain is still an eighth place. And only half a season at champion level in over three years is still a pattern worth questioning.

The real question is not whether Piastri is underrated. The real question is whether he is in the right place to grow into the person he needs to become. And that is a question about environment, not only about ability.

The winter break and what can be repaired

There is one phrase in what Palmer said that I think matters most, and I have saved it for the end. He spoke of a winter break, a reset. Maybe for next winter and a bit of a reset. That is not a condemnation. It is a prescription.

And I believe in prescriptions. Because in this sport, very little is permanent. A driver can reinvent himself. A car can be redesigned. A relationship with an engineer can be rebuilt. Many stories have ended with a bad season and been rewritten by a better one.

The stranger does not need a ticket; they open the door with their own feet. I learned that at sixteen, sitting in the Stade Louis II stands and writing the first lines about a boy no one noticed. And I still believe it. But I have also learned something else since. A door can be opened by your own feet, but it can be closed by other hands. And sometimes, to open it again, you need a period with no one watching, a winter with no lights, a reset that needs no announcement.

That is what I think Piastri needs now. Not an excuse. Not a press conference saying everything is fine. But a winter to rediscover his own feeling with a car, to understand better the operating window he needs, and to rebuild what he may have lost in recent races: confidence in the moment before the corner.

Because in this sport, speed is not in the throttle. Speed is in the moment before you touch the throttle. It is in the certainty inside you that the car will do what you want it to do. And when that certainty disappears, a driver slows everywhere, even where he was once fastest.

What to watch

I want to end with a set of tests. Because an analysis without tests is an analysis that cannot be falsified, and I do not want to write things that cannot be falsified.

The first thing to watch is Azerbaijan. It is a street circuit, and street circuits usually fall into the low-grip group. If Palmer's hypothesis is right, that race will be a direct test. If Piastri struggles again there, it is another piece of the puzzle. If he breaks through, the hypothesis needs re-examination.

The second is the qualifying gap between him and Norris across circuit types. If the gap is clear only at low-grip tracks and narrows at high-grip ones, that confirms we are dealing with a fit problem, not a fundamental speed problem. And that is a completely different diagnosis.

The third is McLaren's strategic order. If the team begins making clearly Norris-favouring strategy calls, it is a signal about the internal hierarchy. And that hierarchy, once established, is very hard to break.

The fourth is new regulations. If next season brings a new regulatory cycle, the operating window of the cars will change, and drivers who struggled with a certain type of car may find one more suited to them. That is why a reset can genuinely change everything, not just be a phrase.

And the last, perhaps most important, is time. In three and a half years, we have seen Piastri have half a season at champion level and the rest at a lower level. The question is not whether he can reach that peak again. The question is whether he can stay on that peak longer than half a season. That is the entire measure of a champion. Not the moment you reach the summit. But how long you remain there.

I once thought this sport was a race between cars. Then I thought it was a race between people. Now I think it is a race between different versions of the same person. And Oscar Piastri's story right now is one of the clearest stories of that race. He is fighting himself more than Lando Norris. And that fight, unlike a Grand Prix, has no red light to signal the start. It begins within, and it only ends when one decides it ends.

That is why, instead of a verdict, I choose to bet on the possibility of a reset. Not because I am certain. But because in this sport, one is rarely wrong to bet that a person can become a better version of themselves. One is only wrong to bet that it will happen immediately.

And I, as someone who once sat at four in the morning watching races from a small flat in London, know that the best things in this sport rarely arrive immediately. They arrive after winter breaks. They arrive after resets. They arrive in moments no one watches, in a room where no one claps.