We turned F1 into NASCAR (and stole Lando Norris' championship)

Max Verstappen, FIA Awards, 2024 — Photo: © IMAGO

F1's Twilight Zone

We turned F1 into NASCAR (and stole Lando Norris' championship)

We also ruined Oscar Piastri's season, sorry

Chris Deeley

Wednesday 14 January 2026 17:58

It’s January. It’s a Wednesday. Let’s change F1.

If it wasn’t already clear, we’re hitting the point in the off-season where the F1 cupboard is a little bit bare. We’re all scrapping over grainy images of cars in private tests, teams releasing paint schemes they’ll never run in races and, god forbid, even paying attention to Peter Windsor saying things.

It’s time for the sports writing equivalent of sacking it all off for a few days somewhere cheap and warm. In this case, it’s helpful that NASCAR have just completely changed their championship format this week!

Article continues under video

As you can read all about at our new site Oval Insider [shameless plug over, revert to normal business], the new hotness is ‘The Chase’ (Bradley Walsh isn’t involved, sorry), squeezing the best drivers in the first 26 races into a mini-competition of their own for the last ten events of the season. Everyone still runs, everyone still tries to win, but it’s the points of those elite few at the top that really, really matter.

The points don’t quite completely reset for the Chase, but it does close things up. Whoever finished the first 26 races with the most points gets a 25-point advantage (55 points for a race win) over the second driver, who gets ten points over the third driver, and then it jumps down in five-point increments.

F1’s always looking for ways to shake things up (nine points for a win! Ten points for a win! Only your best nine results count! Now it’s 25 points for a win and we give points to half the grid!) and Americanise, we it felt right to rescore the 2025 season in this new NASCAR style.

The Nerd Bit

A couple of quick caveats – this is being adapted proportionally. The NASCAR season is 50% longer than its F1 equivalent, so the Chase is coming down to seven races. It would be insane to keep 16 cars qualifying since the F1 field was only 20 cars deep last year, so pro-rating that to take into account the 36-team (ish) NASCAR field gives us: Nine F1 drivers fighting for the title over the final seven races.

Those points gaps built in? They’re based on a system of 55 points for a win rather than 25, so we’re going to roughly half them. 25 points becomes 13 points (rounding up, executive decision), 10 points becomes 5 points, 5 points becomes 3 points.

End of the nerd bit

That gives us the following standings going into F1’s Chase:

Pre-Chase Championship Standings
Position	Driver	Points
1	Oscar Piastri	36
2	Lando Norris	23
3	Max Verstappen	18
4	George Russell	15
5	Charles Leclerc	12
6	Lewis Hamilton	9
7	Kimi Antonelli	6
8	Alex Albon	3
9	Isack Hadjar	0

After the first race of the Chase, the Singapore Grand Prix, Oscar Piastri’s lead has shrunk to just eight points...over race winner George Russell, who’s knocked Lando Norris back into third. That race was weird!

You might remember Austin for the sprint race in which the Maccas crashed into each other! In this timeline, it’ll be remembered as the race where Max Verstappen leapfrogged both of them and Russell to take the championship lead, with the trio behind him separated by just three points.

Isack Hadjar is yet to score a point in the Chase, which feels sad.

There's a lot of text in this piece, so here's a picture of some drivers and bananas

Fast-forwarding a bit, we come into the last three races of the season with Norris at the top of the standings, leading Verstappen by ten points and third-placed Russell by 35. Yes, that’s Russell in third, do not adjust your monitors, Piastri is a further point back in fourth. At least it can’t get any worse for him in Vegas!

[Reader, it got worse for him in Vegas]

If you remember how the end of the season went, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Max Verstappen romps to the title by 37 points over Lando Norris. However, the two of them aren’t joined on the podium by the second McLaren.

So disastrous was Piastri’s second half of the season that despite his clearly superior car, he forfeited his built-in 21 point lead to George Russell as early as Interlagos. The disqualification in Vegas was the final nail in the coffin, and not even the Brit finishing sixth and fifth respectively in the final two races could see him knocked out of third spot.

Lower down the field, Kimi Antonelli absolutely smokes Lewis Hamilton to jump up to sixth and split the Ferraris, while Alex Albon failing to pick up points in a single grand prix (three at the sprint in Austin) means he slides down to ninth, behind Isack Hadjar.

Your final F1 2025 Chase results, with new champion Max Verstappen, are as follows...

Post-Chase Championship Standings
Position	Driver	Points
1	Max Verstappen	184
2	Lando Norris	147
3	George Russell	125
4	Oscar Piastri	122
5	Charles Leclerc	88
6	Kimi Antonelli	75
7	Lewis Hamilton	44
8	Isack Hadjar	12
9	Alex Albon	6

What can we learn from this? God, absolutely nothing. Should F1 adopt this championship format? No! But did we have fun and make friends along the way? I think so, what about you?

F1 HEADLINES: Hamilton Ferrari blame assigned as Norris shares car fears

F1 Max Verstappen Lando Norris Oscar Piastri F1 2025