F1 Q&A: Piastri after Norris deal, Antonelli's Italian GP penalty, Ferrari and Zandvoort

Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli will try to tighten his grip on the drivers' championship on home ground at this weekend's Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

However, the 20-year-old can expect to face a challenge from a resurgent McLaren and in particular Lando Norris, who has won the past two grands prix.

And Monza is of course also home territory for Ferrari, although the long straights of the historic circuit may not suit the characteristics of their car.

BBC Sport F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions before round 13 of the 2026 season.

What does Lando Norris' new contract extension mean for Oscar Piastri? There clearly is some tension behind the scenes and this season his development performance-wise has clearly dipped. - Juha

There is no question that Oscar Piastri has not started this season as well as he did last.

In 2025, the Australian for a large part of the year appeared on course for a first world title, until his season unravelled somewhat in the final third.

This season, team-mate Lando Norris has won two races - and should have won a third in Miami.

Piastri has only looked in contention for a victory in Hungary, when Norris took his first win of the year.

After taking the lead when Norris made an error on the first lap, there was some bad luck involved in Piastri losing the lead to Norris, when he was delayed lapping Carlos Sainz's Williams.

But Piastri acknowledged it would have been difficult to hold Norris back if he had retained the lead because his pace on the hard tyres was weak. It became academic when he retired with a broken gearbox.

Although the qualifying head-to-head statistics between them do not make pleasant reading for Piastri - Norris is 12-4 ahead - on actual pace, there is not a lot to choose between them over one lap. Norris is only faster by 0.071 seconds on average.

It's fair to say, though, that Norris has been comfortably the more convincing race performer - hence the 55-point and three-place gap between them in the championship

There seem to be a few things at issue here.

One might be that Piastri has always been strong in high-speed corners. But the numbers of these that are grip-limited has reduced this year because the engines are often using them to charge the battery, something about which all drivers have complained. So that reduces a point of potential advantage for Piastri.

Second, the cars have less downforce than last year, and Piastri is less comfortable than Norris in low-grip conditions.

Finally, there is no question that Norris upped his game consistently over the course of the second half of last season to win the world title, and has continued to raise his level through this year. Without question, he is one of the drivers of the season so far.

Team principal Andrea Stella said at the last race in the Netherlands: "Last year, we had seen already with Oscar that, from a technical driving point of view, when the car has this low level of grip, like we saw last year for instance in Mexico or in Austin, he needs to adapt the way he drives, the way he thinks, the driving, his expectations.

"This requires a bit of mental effort, which gets him to lose a couple of tenths of a second because you sort of have to process rather than drive through pure instinct because what happens is what you expect.

"So it's one of those cases in which you have to adapt your natural driving style to the demand of the car. So it stays in the space of driving and in the space of the technical side of things. I don't think it has anything to do with any psychological kind of opportunity. This is purely technical."

Stella points out that the top three teams are very close in terms of performance, which means, as he puts it, "as soon as things are not optimised, then you may have a very significant positional loss - it's very brutal from this point of view".

Both McLaren and Piastri reject any suggestion that there might be tension in their relationship.

It's a fact, though, that McLaren wanted to sign Max Verstappen this summer, and that if they had it's virtually certain it would have been Piastri who was replaced.

That possibility has receded for now, with Verstappen's new contract with Red Bull. But that contract has performance clauses, and if Red Bull are still struggling next year, it may well be that McLaren have another go for Verstappen.

For now, Piastri is under contract to the end of 2027 at least, and will be focusing only on getting back to where he knows he can be.

Slow start makes me want to stay - Norris extends McLaren deal to 2030

Why are Mercedes choosing to take a grid penalty for Kimi Antonelli at the next race in Italy? Why not take it at a future grand prix to give Kimi a better chance for a home win or is this not a concern for Mercedes? - Michael

Mercedes have been quite open about the fact that Kimi Antonelli will take a new engine for the Italian Grand Prix, and with it a significant grid penalty that is likely to mean him starting at the back.

The reality is that early season reliability meant this penalty - for exceeding the permitted number of engine parts - was inevitable, and Mercedes have calculated that Monza is the best place to take it for Antonelli.

They have tried to make the decision on facts, and not let the emotion of it being his home grand prix enter into the equation.

This decision will be based partly on the fact that Monza has long straights, and so is one of the tracks where a new engine and its slight performance increase will translate most effectively into lap time.

But also important is Mercedes' analysis of how the engines in his 'pool' can be used most effectively over the remainder of the season

Team principal Toto Wolff said: "With Kimi, we are taking the full thing. In theory, our calculations say that it's the best track to take it. Obviously, algorithms don't take the nationality into consideration. I'm not ready to fight for a championship and get the best PR. That's what we're going to do."

Antonelli's championship lead is still very comfortable, at 59 points. So he can afford to be phlegmatic about this.

He says: "Of course, it's my home race and all that kind of stuff, but, you know, I think it's the best race to do so. So, I think it still will give me a chance to do a great result and bring home good points."

George Russell will have to take a penalty soon, too. This is most likely to be at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, for similar reasons to Antonelli's being at Monza.

Are Ferrari allowing emotion to get in their way? It's perhaps a stretch to say Ferrari can go on to win the title, but surely their best chance is backing the nearest challenger? Are they allowing the emotion of their attachment to Charles Leclerc, and his history with the team, to get in the way of making the clinical, ruthless decisions needed? - Alex

Presumably this question is a reference to the brief dispute between Charles Leclerc and the team at the Dutch Grand Prix, when Lewis Hamilton was coming up behind him on fresher tyres mid-race.

But in the context of the question, it's worth pointing out that they actually did ask Leclerc to move out of the way to optimise Hamilton's race in Zandvoort.

Ferrari operate a policy of equality between their drivers and only favour one over the other if it is obviously in the interests of the team.

That could work either way, and the most obvious time it would be employed is if a race victory was at stake.

Hamilton is their closest driver to the championship lead, at 59 points behind Antonelli. Leclerc is 28 points behind the seven-time champion - only four points further back than Lando Norris.

Hamilton and Leclerc have won one race each, and the qualifying battle between them is incredibly close.

Hamilton is ahead 9-7 on the head-to-head in races where a fair comparison can be made, but Leclerc is actually slightly quicker on average by 0.053secs.

Beyond that, the question seems to presume that the team would favour Leclerc emotionally. But why make that presumption?

Team principal Frederic Vasseur was instrumental in getting Hamilton to join Ferrari for 2025, but he has a long and close relationship going back many years with both drivers.

Why would he be emotionally connected to one more than the other, or consciously allow emotions to rule his management decisions?

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Zandvoort is a great circuit and it's disappointing that they have pulled out of hosting the F1 grand prix for a second time. Is there any chance the circuit might return to the schedule some time in the future? - Lynne

In F1, one quickly learns to never say never, but the chances of the Dutch Grand Prix returning to the calendar seem remote for the foreseeable future.

The race was unique in that it owed its existence to the popularity of one driver - Max Verstappen.

The organisers did an impressive job to host a grand prix at a track that has many logistical challenges, in terms of both its location and its facilities, and to make it work financially for as long as they did.

It was highly popular with Dutch fans. But the event was privately run with no government financial support, and organisers decided that, as race fees went up, the risks that the event would not turn a profit were becoming too high.

This decision was influenced by the fact that there had been a slight decrease in interest in the last couple of years. Understandable, as the novelty wore off.

So organisers decided to end the event after a good run before any decline became more significant and they made a loss.

F1 has no shortage of events with which to replace it. Portugal and Turkey are both coming back to the calendar next year, for example.

Send us your question for F1 correspondent Andrew Benson