For the first time in 2025, Oscar Piastri did not finish a grand prix. After dramatically crashing out of both Q3 and Sunday's first lap, many sensed that the other McLaren driver of Lando Norris could make him pay for that error.
However, after being caught out by the gusty and sprinkling-rainy weather, the British driver tapped the wall en route to P7 in qualifying and finished in that position on Sunday.
On the face of things, that may appear to be a missed opportunity for last year's vice-champion, given that Piastri rarely has as ignominious weekends as these, but he insists otherwise, as he told formula1.com: "It was just too difficult to follow and overtake, so it didn't really matter how quick the car was.
"It's not a missed opportunity. Every race is an opportunity. Today we just weren't good enough and made too many mistakes yesterday."
“We couldn’t really do anything with strategy, so I don’t think we could have done anything more today.”
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Has the 'missed opportunity' tag really been overblown?
It was evident that the Baku weekend, particularly on Saturday, saw incredibly challenging conditions. The wind had a great degree of force and the sprinkling of rain made the street circuit surface akin to an ice-rink, particularly on the painted white lines.
And when you factor in the constantly-changing conditions, with Max Verstappen being one of the last drivers to cross the line and set a lap time during qualifying, the timing of runs can have a significant impact.
However, the lap was not perfect, and time was left on the table. Unfortunately for Norris, an already-compromised race, given the difficulty of overtaking and McLaren's lack of straight-line-speed advantage, was restricted further by a sloppy safety car restart and a slow pit stop.
Meanwhile further back at that restart...
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 21, 2025
Leclerc breezes past Norris and moves up to P7 #F1 #AzerbaijanGP pic.twitter.com/EBqXleu3no
While the latter was not his fault, battling Charles Leclerc was a result of simply being caught out, and it did cost him race time. That does not mean that he would have finished on the podium, because his race was already an uphill struggle, but from both driver and team, points were there for the taking which were not seized.
This meant that he did not have enough time to get by Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda and Racing Bull's Liam Lawson, in the closing laps, within the DRS train. That was the difference between a P5 and P7, where the Brit finished.
As Norris pointed to, it was their execution on Saturday which was more damaging to their weekend, however there was a bigger window of opportunity during the grand prix which was not taken.
Where that leaves the championship battle?
Norris now trails teammate Piastri by 25 points, and has closed the gap by nine points in the last pair of races. However, Max Verstappen is potentially growing as a threat, with the Dutchman now just 44 points behind the second McLaren driver.
Hence, unless Piastri has another bruising weekend, the onus is on Norris to be the difference-maker and not rely upon the shortcomings of the other side of the garage, which is what happened this past weekend.
But, in the two races since his non-finish at Zandvoort, he has outscored Piastri both times- which is still important and beneficial to his title pursuit.
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