Lewis Hamilton has claimed that McLaren duo Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will be under “unimaginable pressure” going for their maiden Formula 1 title in 2025.
Piastri has carved out a comfortable 22-point lead over his team-mate Norris in the Drivers’ Championship with five victories across the opening 10 races.
Title rivals Max Verstappen and Norris have won two races each, with George Russell securing Mercedes’ first win of the season at Montreal, two weeks ago.
Hamilton, who won his maiden title with the Woking-based squad in 2008, is observing Piastri’s meteoric rise from close quarters and believes that the 24-year-old is doing everything he needs to ensure that he triumphs in the title race this season.
“I don’t know him a huge amount. We sometimes talk a little bit on the parades, but he’s always been very easy to approach, easy to speak to. He’s clearly a nice lad,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“We’ve seen both, and obviously, particularly Oscar, doing a great, great job weekend in, weekend out, delivering, qualifying, and everything you need to do to win a World Championship.
“So I don’t have any advice. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and it seems to be working.”
Hamilton drops insight into intra-team McLaren fight
At the start of 2025, many had suggested that the rivalry between Norris and Piastri was bound to intensify as the season progressed and the title race took shape.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown had even conceded that it was a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ the duo traded blows on track.
The inevitable happened at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve when Norris crashed into Piastri in the final phase of the 70-lap race.
Hamilton is no stranger to intra-team battles boiling over. At McLaren, in his rookie year, he was pitted against Fernando Alonso for the title and it didn’t take too long for sparks to fly.
At Mercedes, the intensity of fighting for the championship soured his long-standing friendship with Nico Rosberg, culminating in the infamous double-DNF at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix.
Looking at Norris and Piastri, the 40-year-old says that the pressures of sustaining such a dynamic throughout the season would be “unimaginable”.
“I think the job he [Piastri] is doing is fantastic,” he added.
“It’s mega for me to see McLaren doing so well, because that’s where I started, and also to see them so close, him and Lando, two great drivers.
“The pressure on both of them will be unimaginable, I would say, for most people that are not experiencing it, and who have not experienced it.”
READ MORE — Lando Norris admits it’s inevitable relationship with Oscar Piastri will ‘change’
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