Q&A: Norris' title hopes - and Antonelli 'like an artichoke'

Oscar Piastri took a firm grip on the drivers' championship by winning the Dutch Grand Prix as McLaren team-mate and title rival Lando Norris retired.

Racing Bulls' Isack Hadjar took his first Formula 1 podium at the age of 20 as he came home third, behind Max Verstappen.

It was a miserable race for Ferrari with both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc crashing out. They will be hoping for much better on home soil at this weekend's Italian Grand Prix.

Before the race at Monza, BBC Sport F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.

Does Oscar Piastri seem much more like the championship favourite after Norris' unfortunate retirement in Zandvoort swung the gap between them from nine to 34 points? - Andrew

Norris admitted after the Dutch Grand Prix that the oil leak that caused his retirement in Zandvoort had "only made it harder for me and put me under more pressure".

Thirty-four points is certainly a substantial lead for Piastri with nine races to go, especially for a driver who has been so solid this year and is, in Norris' words, "good in pretty much every situation".

That points lead is the equivalent of a win and a fifth place. To put it another way, Norris would need to win the next five races with Piastri in second each time to take back the lead of the championship.

So, of course - in that context - Piastri is now a stronger favourite than before - but it could be argued he was a reasonably strong favourite, anyway.

It's hard to think of anything Piastri has done wrong since he and Norris spun together at the Australian Grand Prix at the start of the season - an incident from which Norris was able to recover to win, but Piastri was left a ninth-place finish, because of where each ended up when they encountered a late-race downpour.

Piastri already had a nine-point lead heading to Zandvoort, and that would have grown to 16 had Norris finished second rather than retired. It's also worth bearing in mind Piastri could easily have arrived there with a 27-point advantage already.

His penalty in Silverstone was controversial, and some believe that by rights he should have won in Hungary.

McLaren's policy of allowing their drivers freedom to choose different strategies to try to beat their team-mate is what enabled Norris to recover from losing ground at the start to beat Piastri there.

Piastri himself insisted he did not feel hard done by, but there are senior people in other teams who think he had the right to, given standard team-management arrangements, which usually favour the lead driver with strategy.

Despite Norris' strong recovery since McLaren made a front-suspension tweak in Canada to help him with his feeling for the front axle, Piastri has unquestionably been McLaren's more consistent performer this season, having impressively stepped up his game since last year.

Having said that, Piastri's lead is far from insurmountable. Bigger advantages have been overturned in shorter times before.

In 2007, for example, Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen was 17 points behind - the equivalent of 43 now, as there was a different points system - with two races to go, and still beat McLaren's Lewis Hamilton to the title.

In 2012, Ferrari's Fernando Alonso had a 39-point lead over Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel with seven races to go, but Vettel still managed to recover and win the title. Admittedly, Vettel had a significant car advantage, and Alonso had some very bad luck.

And in 2014 and 2016, Lewis Hamilton several times recovered large gaps to team-mate Nico Rosberg. In 2014, successfully, and in 2016 not so, but only just, and only because of an engine failure while he was leading in Malaysia.

It's still under Norris' control. And as he put it: "It's almost a big enough gap now that I can just chill out about it and just go for it."

If he manages to keep that mindset, stays calm, and delivers his absolute best, Norris can still do it. It certainly won't be easy. But then F1 is not meant to be. It's meant to test people to their limits against the very best.

With Isack Hadjar doing amazingly and outperforming the second Red Bull, would it harm his career if called to join the senior team? - Bob

Hadjar was already in with a decent shout of being promoted to Red Bull alongside Max Verstappen next year, even before his outstanding performance at the Dutch Grand Prix.

The argument against promoting Hadjar is that Max Verstappen has destroyed every team-mate since Daniel Ricciardo left at the end of 2018, and Hadjar will be in only his second season next year.

It's a big ask for anyone to take on Verstappen, let alone someone that raw.

But the other options might not look that appealing to Red Bull.

Yuki Tsunoda has failed to convince since he was promoted in place of Liam Lawson after two races this season, and has to up his game quickly if he wants to make a strong case for Red Bull to continue with him.

Lawson is unlikely to be given another shot in the senior team so soon. And of their current drivers in F1, that only leaves Hadjar.

Red Bull prefer not to go outside their driver pool, but in this case there is no-one obvious available anyway.

Team principal Laurent Mekies said on Sunday they would take their time over the decision.

"As much as we like the emotion of the race-by-race feeling," Mekies said, "the truth is, if you step back, look at it from a Red Bull perspective, it's our drivers, we have them all under contract, it's only us making the decisions - us meaning the Red Bull group. Why would you put yourself under pressure based on a result or another?"

How refreshing to watch the Dutch Grand Prix without the constant talk of 'track limits'. It makes for a better spectacle! When will some of the other sterile tracks take note? - Dean

Zandvoort, which hosts the Dutch Grand Prix, is what is known in motorsport as an "old-school track".

That means a circuit that has history, was designed several decades ago, and which as a consequence has characteristics that many newer circuits do not.

These tend to include the sense of the layout following the natural contours of the land, so the track feels as if it is part of its environment rather than having been placed on it. That is in addition to jeopardy created by features such as a relatively narrow track, walls that are relatively close to the circuit, and grass rather than asphalt surrounding it.

Zandvoort is also fast and demanding, with a layout that severely tests drivers' skills. If a driver makes a mistake, they are generally punished for it - which leads to incidents and drama.

The drivers generally much prefer this type of track to more modern ones. Other typical examples are, of course, Suzuka, Spa-Francorchamps, Montreal and Silverstone, as well as street circuits such as Monaco.

Track limits are part of this picture, especially when grass lines a track rather than asphalt run-offs.

It's highly unlikely, because of the importance of safety, that any new road courses will be designed in the old style.

Having said that, F1 bosses have now recognised the issue of track limits as a problem, and are starting to make changes to tracks to address it.

So you might have seen, for example, strips of grass, real or artificial, or gravel, placed just off the track, separating it from the asphalt that makes up the new run-off areas.

On top of this, it is widely recognised that variety in the calendar is important. So although Zandvoort has chosen not to continue with its grand prix after next year, F1's bosses have every intention of keeping other similar tracks on the schedule.

Is Kimi Antonelli still the generational talent that everyone thought he was? - Martin

Mercedes chose to fast-track Kimi Antonelli into F1 this season as a replacement for Lewis Hamilton because they believed in his natural ability, and his potential to be a future superstar.

Everyone in F1 had heard the stories about the huge scale of his talent before he made his debut, and there was great expectation as to how he would do.

It's fair to say, though, that he has had a rocky start to his career. F1 is an unforgiving environment, and within the paddock there are definitely those who are starting to question whether Antonelli really has the future Mercedes hoped he would.

Antonelli's season started well, and he made steady progress through the first races, before a strong performance in Miami, when he took pole for the sprint race and out-qualified team-mate George Russell for the grand prix, too.

But then his momentum was affected when Mercedes introduced a new rear suspension on the car. It worked well in Canada, where Antonelli scored his first podium and Russell won. But it made the car's handling unpredictable on subsequent circuits, and rocked Antonelli's confidence.

Mercedes reverted to their previous suspension for the Hungarian Grand Prix, and the drivers reported the car was much more predictable again.

However, Antonelli had a difficult weekend in the Netherlands, starting with a small crash in first practice, and then a mistake in the race that took out Ferrari's Charles Leclerc.

He acknowledged his error, and after the race Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff said that he still had "100% belief in him in the long term".

Wolff said: "When we made it clear last year in Monza that we would give him the opportunity, it was also saying that we would give him a year of learning, and there would be moments where we'd tear our hair out, and there would be other moments of brilliance. And I think this weekend pretty much sums that up.

"The mistake in FP1, clearly something that puts him on the back foot for the weekend. And then in the race, these moments of great driving. Once he was in free air, he was behind the McLaren, the quickest car, caught up, and then again, was involved in an accident that unfortunately meant the end for Charles' race and also for Kimi's race.

"So ups and downs, and that was absolutely expected from this season. And every one of those days is going to be a learning for next year.

"The swings are enormous. But it's there. It just needs to be unpeeled like an artichoke, where at the end there is the gold. My analogies are not great today, my metaphors, but you know what I mean. It's there and we have no doubt."