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Lando Norris beat Max Verstappen to win the 2025 F1 Championship. There was a lot of focus on the Dutch driver's second half of the season, where he put together a remarkable turnaround.
If the Dutch driver had ended up winning the championship, it would have seen him overcome a 105-point championship deficit at one time to win the title. That would have been the biggest championship comeback by a driver in terms of the points deficit that he had to overcome. While that is the case, even though Verstappen did not end up clinching the title, Lando Norris did.
And while a lot of focus has been on the Dutch driver's comeback, the Brit has ended up putting together a comeback that puts him amongst one of the biggest comebacks in terms of points deficit.
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With that being said, let's take a look at the list of drivers with the top 5 comebacks in a championship battle, when it comes to points deficit.
#5 Lewis Hamilton (29 points in 2014)
At #5, we have Lewis Hamilton, who put together a remarkable comeback in 2014 against Nico Rosberg. After the race in Belgium, where the driver made contact with his teammate, and hence lost valuable points, it came down to how he was going to respond in the upcoming races.
After the F1 Belgian GP, Lewis Hamilton began his turnaround, and there was no looking back after that.
#4 Sebastian Vettel (31 points in 2010)
Sebastian Vettel's first title win had so many ups and downs that it was hard to just keep track of where he was in the championship. The driver was plagued by multiple DNFs due to reliability issues, and entering the last race of the season, the driver had not even led the championship throughout the season.
The Zenith of the campaign was arguably at the Korean GP, when the driver was on his way to win the race, but would see his engine give up with a few laps left in the race.
The largest points deficit during the campaign was, however, after the F1 Belgian GP, a race that Lewis Hamilton won and was 31 points ahead of Sebastian Vettel.
#3 Lando Norris (34 points in 2025)
Lando Norris is the latest entry on this list, and the driver finds himself here after overcoming a 34-point deficit to teammate Oscar Piastri.
The two drivers had been neck and neck in the championship going into the summer break, as Max Verstappen continued to become a lesser and lesser factor in the championship.
Lando Norris' campaign suffered a major blow in the F1 Dutch GP when his power unit blew up and handed Oscar Piastri a 34-point championship lead. From that point onwards, Lando Norris switched gears and ended up winning the title.
#2 Sebastian Vettel (44 points in 2012)
At #2, we have Max Verstappen's Red Bull predecessor, Sebastian Vettel. Just like his first title triumph, the German's third title triumph was a bit of a struggle with Red Bull taking some time getting on top of the car.
The campaign hit its lowest point after the race in Germany, where Vettel could only finish P3, and Fernando Alonso won. From that point onwards, Sebastian Vettel continued to work on closing the gap on the Spaniard and would eventually clinch the championship for the third time.
#1 Max Verstappen (46 points in 2022)
At the top of the mountain, we have Max Verstappen. The Dutch driver came into 2022 on the back of a successful campaign in 2021.
The season began with the realisation that Max Verstappen would be in title contention again, but this time it would be against Charles Leclerc in a Ferrari.
After a DNF due to reliability issues in the first race of the season in Bahrain, the Dutch driver fought back to win the race in Jeddah. Panic struck the Red Bull camp for the first time in Australia, where Max Verstappen would once again suffer a race-ending PU failure.
As a result, the Dutch driver was now 46 points behind Charles Leclerc in the championship. The Dutch driver would now script a remarkable comeback from this point and end up clinching the championship with multiple races to spare.
