Lando Norris told how to guarantee F1 title as Fernando Alonso helps McLaren star

Fernando Alonso has offered some advice to Lando Norris as he looks to drag himself back into World Championship contention. The Brit trails team-mate Oscar Piastri by 34 points heading into the final nine races of the 2025 season. Norris and Piastri have been separated by a hair's breadth throughout their intra-team title fight, but after entering the summer break with three wins in his past four Grand Prix starts, the Bristol-born driver was dealt a heartbreaking blow in Zandvoort.

He suffered a mechanical failure while running second behind Piastri, turning a seven-point swing into a weekend of maximum damage. With nine races remaining, Norris is relying on winning at least five or six of the remaining races, while hoping that his team-mate suffers some misfortune of his own.

"[There's] nothing you can do on the external factors," two-time world champion Alonso explained in Monza. "You just need to deliver the job every weekend, as they do. They are doing incredibly well. They have a very strong car, but they keep delivering always, even on the difficult weekends."

Alonso added: "Yeah, Lando was unlucky in Zandvoort, but still many races to go. You just focus on winning every weekend if you can. If you do that, you will be champion. And accepting that sometimes you will be second or third, and try to keep the next one alive."

Despite the setback, Norris arrived at the Italian Grand Prix with a positive attitude, having put the heartbreak behind him. "Of course, it's frustrating," he confessed. "But at the same time, the reason makes it pretty easy to just move on from it.

"If it was something I did, I'd probably be still kicking myself, or I'd still be pretty down about it. But I think the fact it had nothing to do with me made it pretty easy just to go: 'Well, that's life.' You know, what can I do? So it's surprisingly easy, probably, for myself to put it behind, and look ahead to this weekend. That's what I'm excited for."

For the latest breaking stories and headlines, sign up to our Daily Express F1 newsletter, or join our WhatsApp community here.

Unfortunately for the Brit, his team-mate is not taking his foot off the gas. Worse still, Piastri has finished on the podium in 13 of the last 14 races, with his one exception coming in the form of a fourth-place finish at the Canadian Grand Prix.

"Honestly, [it changes] very little," he declared. "In one of my own championships, I've had a much bigger gap than this and had it pretty much erased before the final round. So I've got personal experience of this not being a comfortable gap.

"It's still far too early to be calculating and settling for positions that aren't first, so the approach is still exactly the same. That won't change until the gap is pretty significantly bigger or the amount of races is significantly smaller."