Oscar Piastri insists his lead over Lando Norris is far from “comfortable”

Oscar Piastri believes his 34-point lead over Lando Norris is “not a comfortable gap” following the Dutch Grand Prix.

Piastri clinched his seventh victory of the season to move well clear of Norris in the F1 drivers’ championship.

Norris was on course to finish second at Zandvoort, but a late reliability issue forced him to retire.

The gap between the pair heading into this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix is 34 points - the most it’s been all season.

Norris will have to win at least seven of the remaining nine races to win the championship, if Piastri has no reliability issues himself.

Speaking in the post-race FIA press conference on Sunday, Piastri insisted that there’s “still a long way to go” in the title race.

“No, I don’t think so. There’s still a long way to go,” Piastri said.

“I need to keep pushing and trying to win races still. I wouldn’t say it’s a very comfortable margin.

“As we saw today, it can change with one DNF very, very quickly. So this far out from the end of the year, it’s not a comfortable gap.”

Piastri “massively proud” of progress

It was an impressive weekend from Piastri.

Heading into qualifying, it looked like Norris was the heavy favourite to take pole position.

However, Piastri produced a lap in Q3 to pip his teammate.

Oscar Piastri struggled for pace last year at the Dutch GP.

Norris dominated the 2024 event from pole, winning ahead of Max Verstappen.

Piastri finished fourth, over 27 seconds behind his teammate.

“Very. I think qualifying was the key this weekend,” Piastri added.

“Through the free practice sessions, it was looking like a difficult Zandvoort again, but we chipped away, tried to find time, tweak the car here and there, but just tried to really improve how I was driving because, let’s be honest, it’s pretty hard to complain about the car we’ve got.

“So just tried to chip away with that and it came good when it mattered. And through the race today, I felt like I had good pace as well and used that when I needed to.

“So massively proud of firstly myself, but also the whole team around me in turning it around from 12 months ago.”