Lewis Hamilton feud crucial to title challenge

F1 is heading towards the business end of the season. The importance of racing has ramped up and the pressure of a title battle has drastically increased.

Yet something seems a bit off about the intra-McLaren battle between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris. This year's title is on a knife edge with just nine points between them ahead of the final stretch of the season, starting with the Dutch Grand Prix this weekend.

There is a lack of excitement and anticipation in their battle, and dare I say it drama too. Despite them both dominating the championship this season and having put in excellent drives there still seems to be an air of unauthenticity about the whole thing.

There are a few reasons for that. One of them being that no matter which of the Australian or British driver triumphs this term, there is perhaps a large group of fans, pundits and possibly drivers alike who will still say that the greatest current driver in the world is Max Verstappen.

The four-time world champion is perhaps helping himself cement that reputation in the way he has dragged an awful Red Bull RB21 to race victories while his team-mates for a good couple of years now have been left scratching their heads and grateful just to place a Red Bull car in the top 10.

How Hill vs Villeneuve became epic

But this alone cannot be the reason. Michael Schumacher was recognised as the best driver in F1 from the mid-1990s onwards but that didn't stop there being a keen following of the title duel between non-world champion team-mates Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in 1996.

In what was a very similar scenario to now, the Williams was streets ahead of Schumacher's Ferrari (in the way the McLaren is streets ahead of Verstappen's Red Bull now) but there was the crucial jeopardy in place for Hill to buy into as a story. After many near misses, 1996 was realistically his final chance to win a title so there was a highly emotional narrative that otherwise prevented the campaign from being a total washout as everyone waited for Schumacher to bounce a few heads together at Ferrari.

It was to be over another decade again before we saw two drivers on the same team well in the hunt for the championship - and the drama was off the scale. Lewis Hamilton vs Fernando Alonso turned into one of the most bitter civil wars in F1 history and barely a race went by during the second half of 2007 without some sort of soap opera drama at McLaren - and we are including on the track stuff as well.

Hamilton: The Alonso and Rosberg rivalry years

The depths, reasons and conspiracies on that season are a topic for another time. The point is the rivalry during the season will be talked about in F1 circles until the end of time - especially with the added twist that the feud probably cost McLaren the drivers' championship that year after Kimi Raikkonen at Ferrari beat them both by a point.

True, there was a Ferrari element in there to make that title fight even more fascinating. But let's move to Exhibit B of Lewis Hamilton feuds - the Rosberg years.

This is a better example as the Mercedes were ultra dominant with no outside challenge, yet the bitter feud between Hamilton and Rosberg could at least offer some sort of drama to proceedings to cover the otherwise processional racing.

Think to the Hamilton cap throw at the 2015 United States Grand Prix, the collision/double retirement in Spain in 2016 and the bitterness that split the two garages across most of their four years together - certainly from late 2014 - 2016 anyway. During the last three seasons they were the only two drivers that could win the title and it was sadly the only real story on the grid.

The McLaren F1 title battle problem

So fast forward to now. Norris vs Piastri. We have two drivers who are still in the shadow of Verstappen's class, have no compelling story for their title charge (Damon Hill) and between them don't have a bitter rivalry that has helped spark intra-team title challenges of the past (Lewis Hamilton x2).

It's sad to say it but while their good relationship reflects well on each other as humans in the heat of battle, it's doing little to entertain audiences as we prepare to enter the crucial stages of their championship fight. They are simply too nice in this respect.

No one is asking Norris to walk into the Dutch Grand Prix paddock and headbutt Piastri to install some sort of McLaren team-mate crisis, but something needs to spark to make this 2025 championship seem... relevant.

Maybe as the races become more important this will develop but for now more people seem keener on what miracle Verstappen will pull off next, or if we will ever see the best of Hamilton again at Ferrari. The title race has somehow become a subplot.

As it is, we are likely to end up with a well deserved winner of this season's F1 drivers' crown from McLaren and a new world champion to boot - but it's also likely to be a championship campaign that could be quite quickly forgotten.

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