Has Lando Norris blown a golden opportunity in F1 2025 title fight?

Lando Norris let a golden opportunity to make up ground on Oscar Piastri slip in a chaotic qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Piastri made a rare error by crashing in the final part of a bonkers qualifying in Baku, leaving him only ninth on the grid for Sunday’s grand prix.

That presented McLaren teammate and championship rival Norris with a big chance to put himself in the driving seat to claim some momentum in the title fight.

But Norris, who is 31 points behind Piastri with eight races remaining this season, had a scrappy final lap in Q3 and ended up a disappointing seventh - just two places ahead of the Australian.

Norris firmly rejection the suggestion that this was an opportunity missed, responding “no” when that question was put to him.

The Briton clipped the wall at Turn 15 and his lap time was 1.122 seconds slower than Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who claimed pole position.

“I didn’t have a delta so I don’t know how much I lost. Two tenths maybe, so a couple of positions, but not 1.1 seconds to Max,” Norris said.

Sky Sports F1 pundit Jamie Chadwick thinks Norris will be kicking himself.

"I think a part of him will think 'because my team-mate was in the wall, I'm still ahead of him' albeit not where he needed to be,” the three-time W Series champion said.

"If Oscar was on pole and he was P7 then that would be even worse but, at the same time, I think he'll think this was a good opportunity to take quite a considerable amount of points away from Oscar tomorrow.

"But it's still all to play for tomorrow and Lando has looked stronger than Oscar all weekend, to be honest.”

Lando Norris rues ‘mistake’ to go out first

Norris admitted it was a “mistake” by McLaren to go out first in qualifying.

“I think it was mistake from my side, from our side, to go out the pit lane first. It couldn’t have been - if there was a yellow flag further back or a red, we would have looked like the heroes and everyone else would have looked like losers," he explained. 

“Now I kind of look like the loser and them heroes, but it’s the price you pay sometimes around here and the risks you’ve got to take.

“But it was still spitting a little bit, so I think anyone who was further back, just more grip. Just a decision that didn’t work out in the end. Something we’ll review and try to do better next time."

But McLaren team principal Andrea Stella defended the call.

"There was a bit of pressure with time, there’s a pressure with yellow flags,” Stella told Sky Sports F1.

"So, I think in our condition, it was important to put a lap together. Ultimately, the lap didn’t come as good as we wanted. But being first gives you the safety from a yellow flag point of view, you can control the warm up of the tyres on the out-lap.

"We thought that was alright from that point of view, it was just more a matter of executing the lap."