Helmut Marko has done a lot of talking in the last week. Red Bull’s octogenarian motorsport adviser has been busy doing the rounds, on the radio and in the papers, defending the team’s decision to jettison Liam Lawson after just two races and bring in Yuki Tsunoda.
Marko’s latest (self-serving) justification was to pin the blame on Adrian Newey for not promoting Tsunoda sooner, claiming the now-departed engineer was “furious” with the Japanese for a crash in Mexico last year, which hurt Max Verstappen’s chances in that race. “From then on, Yuki was a red rag to him,” Marko told Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung. “But now Newey is gone and Yuki has worked hard on himself.”
Anyway, while there is justifiable intrigue within the F1 community to see how Red Bull’s decision pans out in Suzuka this weekend, it was something Marko said almost as an aside during one of his many interviews, which was potentially of more significance as far as this year’s title race is concerned.
“With an eight-point deficit after two races, nothing has really happened yet,” Marko noted of the drivers’ championship, in which McLaren’s Lando Norris leads Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. “Aside from the fact that Norris and Piastri will hopefully continue to steal points from each other for some time, a truly Verstappen-friendly track is coming up...”
Marko may or may not be wrong about Lawson and Tsunoda, but he is definitely not wrong about Norris and Piastri. If the first two races of the year are anything to go by, McLaren’s two drivers will be taking points off each other all season.
Norris leads the drivers’ championship on 44 points, with Piastri fourth, 10 points behind the Briton. But that is largely down to the fact that Piastri spun during the rain-affected Australian race, finishing ninth as Norris won. Until that spin – which of course he ultimately has to take the blame for – the Australian had looked to be a threat to Norris, even being instructed to hold position at one point after he closed.
Where it all went wrong for home-hero @OscarPiastri 😱#F1#AusGPpic.twitter.com/SDC1vkbyPU
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 16, 2025
In China, Piastri was clearly the more comfortable of the two McLaren drivers, finishing second in the sprint and winning the feature race.
