Oscar Piastri, the promising young driver for McLaren, has lost his lead in the Formula 1 championship standings to teammate Lando Norris. Piastri had a challenging race, but came home for a respectable fifth-place finish. Now he finds himself just one point behind Norris and with only four grands prix (and two sprints) remaining this season.
Despite the success, the race weekend proved to be major tests for Piastri. He tussled with Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda for the first 10 laps before eventually completing an overtaking move of his own. Throughout the race, Piastri noted that he had to adapt his driving style significantly compared to earlier in the season.
“That’s been a little bit strange to get my head around because I’ve been driving exactly the same all year but the last couple of weeks the car, the tyres, have required a different style of driving.” – Oscar Piastri
While there were multiple opportunities in all of the last few races that Piastri could not take a podium would make it four races straight without a top-three finish. This time last month, he was leading the championship standings by a whopping 34 points. That’s all changed as his on track struggles have caused him to slump badly, and with it, that margin has evaporated.
During this his most recent race, Piastri was in a heated duel for the fourth position with Haas’s Ollie Bearman. All that changed dramatically when a virtual safety car was called on the second-to-last lap. This neutralized the race and held Piastri up from making any more moves up. He took the race’s most ambitious strategy call late in the race to jump George Russell. He did not consistently have the political latitude to stand his ground.
Frustrated by his own performance, and in particular the high starting position of 18th on the grid. He started seventh, but lost two spots to drop to ninth on the very first lap. He thought that this misfortune could have blocked his prospects for a podium finish.
“It was difficult to know if I could have made the podium had I qualified better than seventh,” Piastri remarked.
Despite his struggles, Piastri remains focused on learning and adapting his driving style to suit the McLaren car’s current demands.
“I think for me the biggest thing is trying to learn the things I want to learn today. Yesterday kind of became obvious after the session that I needed to change how I was driving. Today it was about limiting the damage but also about that.” – Oscar Piastri
Commenting on the overall race situation, David Croft noted that the deployment of the virtual safety car “has utterly robbed us of a brilliant finish today,” reflecting the sentiments of fans and analysts alike who expected a more competitive showdown.
