F1 title race opens up after Lando Norris wins in Austria - latest odds

Brit Lando Norris has cut teammate Oscar Piastri’s Drivers' Championship lead to 15 points, after a decent win in Austria. In doing so, he has also seen his championship odds cut at the bookmakers.

Norris, who was 7/4 after the Canadian Grand Prix, a month ago, is now priced at 6/4 by Ladbrokes, although Piastri remains the clear favourite at 1/2.

Norris headed into the Austrian Grand Prix as the slight second-favourite. The Brit sat behind Piastri in the table and had accepted responsibility for the crash in Canada that forced him to retire from the race. 

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He took a dominant pole position this weekend after McLaren made improvements to both cars, specifically to Norris’s front suspension. The team and driver believe that the suspension change will give him an improved feel in corners, where Norris likes to push his car to the limit. 

It certainly worked in qualifying, and it seemed to benefit the Bristolian during the race. Despite a few tricky moments, especially one lap where Norris gave up the lead to Piastri before taking it back again, he finished a dominant performance with his third victory of the season. 

Norris said of his performance: “It was a tough race, pushing the whole way through, tricky, hot, tiring. We had a great battle, that’s for sure. It was a lot of fun for me, a lot of stress, but a lot of fun.”

In the end, Norris won by a gap of nearly 3 seconds, although Piastri had cut that down to around 1 second before the pair got caught up in traffic during the last lap. 

Away from the McLaren pair, Verstappen saw his title chances suffer a serious setback – the Red Bull was taken out by the Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli on the first lap. The World Champion now trails Piastri by 61 points. 

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The weekend did look positive for Ferrari. The Italian marque enjoyed a third-place finish for Charles Leclerc and a fourth for Lewis Hamilton, although the former World Champion may be miffed at the team’s decision to call him in for a second pit stop, despite the racer’s claims his tires felt fine. He may have felt he had the pace to catch Leclerc and get on the podium himself.

Things have gotten tighter at the top of the championship, at least for the two leading racers. 12 races in, Piastri sits on 216 points with five wins this season. Norris is back in second, on 201 points from three wins.  Verstappen is behind them, on 155 points, with Russell and Leclerc making up the top five, with 146 and 119 points respectively. Hamilton is yet to feature on a podium this year and has 91 points to his name.

There are 13 races of the season left, with three races to go before the summer break in August. Next up is the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, where Norris will be hoping home turf advantage will enable him to gain back-to-back wins. He has been made the 6/4 favourite to do exactly that, with Piastri the 7/4 second favourite and Verstappen at 9/2. 

Odds on the World Championship, correct at the time of writing, from Ladbrokes: