As the 2025 Formula 1 season unfolds with a thrilling intra-team title fight at McLaren, seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton has offered a glimpse into the immense psychological strain that such a rivalry can bring.
Oscar Piastri currently leads the championship with five victories in the opening 10 rounds, pulling 22 points clear of his teammate Lando Norris, who, along with Max Verstappen, has managed two wins this year.
And while the on-track performance is generating headlines, Hamilton warns that it’s the off-track toll that could ultimately define the season.
Hamilton, who famously won his first world title with McLaren in 2008 amid a fiery debut-year rivalry with Fernando Alonso, has walked this exact tightrope before – a balance of cooperation and competition that can quickly unravel.
Speaking about Piastri’s performances so far, the Mercedes driver was full of praise for the 24-year-old Australian driver, now in his third season among motorsport’s elite.
“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,” Hamilton told the median quoted by 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.”
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While McLaren CEO Zak Brown had long anticipated tensions between his star drivers, the reality set in at the Canadian Grand Prix, where Norris collided with Piastri in the final laps of the race.
It was a moment reminiscent of Hamilton’s own entanglements later in his career at Mercedes with teammate Nico Rosberg, whose friendship with the Briton dissolved as title stakes grew.
Hamilton, now 40 and in his final years of F1, has spent much of his career inside the pressure cooker that defines title fights between teammates. He says that what Piastri and Norris are currently navigating can’t easily be understood by those on the outside.
“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,” commented the seven-time world champion.
“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.”
And it’s this mental element that may prove decisive in the latter half of the season.
As the title race heats up and McLaren edges closer to its first drivers’ crown since Hamilton’s coronation in 2008, the question is no longer about raw speed — it’s about which of their drivers can endure the mounting internal and external pressures without cracking.
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