Norris vs Verstappen has shades of Hunt and Lauda's epic battle

Lando Norris came into last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix with only a tiny mathematical chance of challenging runaway leader Max Verstappen for the world title. But he did so with his McLaren very much the form car of the last few races, with the previously dominant car of the reigning champion apparently struggling. Norris’ resounding Zandvoort victory after an iffy start off the line suddenly started to make that remote title challenge look a little less remote – though still mathematically unlikely.

Forty-eight years ago McLaren’s James Hunt came into the Zandvoort weekend in a very distant second place and with only four subsequent races left in which to claw back his deficit to reigning champion Niki Lauda who was, of course, lying in a hospital bed recovering from his life-threatening burns at the German Grand Prix two races earlier. But even before Lauda’s crash, his Ferrari’s previously dominant form had begun to falter. McLaren already had it on the run in terms of raw speed. But Lauda’s opening flurry of victories had made his points lead formidable and there was already talk that he was set to return to the fray at Monza, two weeks after Zandvoort.

Lauda was on 61 points to Hunt’s 38 coming into the weekend. Hunt’s resounding victory (after an iffy-start off the line required him to do some overtaking) put him on 47 points. Suddenly the challenge seemed a little less impossible, if still formidable.

Norris has nine races left to close down Verstappen’s 70 points lead. But this scoring system gives many more points than the 9-6-4-3-2-1 system in play in the ‘70s. He came into the weekend with 71.8% of Verstappen’s score and left it with 76.3% of it. This compares to Hunt who came to Zandvoort with 62% of Lauda’s score and left it with 77%. Unbelievably, Lauda would miss only two races because he was a remarkable and unimaginably brave man. Hunt really needed to fully capitalise on his rival’s absence and after he’d not really done so in Austria with an unremarkable fourth place, he did so in Holland. But from now on it was surely going to be harder to take such big chunks, as Lauda would surely be scoring at the very least. Realistically, Hunt had to be targeting winning every remaining race.