Piastri first signs of “agitation” in team mate title race – In just his third season of Formula One Racing, Oscar Piastri is in the running to become just the 35th champion racing driver. Three years ago the young Australian was the centre of a tug of war between McLaren and Alpine, with both teams claiming to have his signature for the 2023 season.
Alpine’s loss was McLaren and Piastri’s gain, but the rate of progress Piastri has shown has been nothing short of astonishing. In his first two years with the papaya liveried team, the Aussie was comfortable beaten by his team mate as he struggled with tyre management.
This season however, Piastri has been a revelation although his season didn’t start well as in the closing stages in Melbourne he spun at the final corner slipping from P2 to P10. Following Lando Norris crash and loss of ten points in Canada, it was his team mate who had a significant advantage over him of 22 points.
Piastri hailed for his cool
Yet with Norris wining three of the four Grand Prix since, heading into the summer break Piastri’s lead has been trimmed to just nine points. Win or lose, the young Australian has impressed with his level head and cool, calm demeanour, yet with an F1 driver’s title up for grabs – now between just two drivers – will the pressure get to the McLaren driver?
McLaren are dominant in 2025 and with 1-2 finishes at the next two weekends, they could claim the constructors’ title as early as round seventeen in Baku. But this could be the only season which sees McLaren in such a dominant position, where one of their drivers will become a Formula One champion.
For now Piastri has the edge over Norris, but there are banana skins lying in wait for the Aussie as the season hurtles towards a conclusion in Abu Dhabi. Next time up at Zandvoort, Norris is returning to a circuit where he claimed his first win in Holland last season. Singapore and Abu Dhabi also saw victories for the British driver, and across Norris’ career, the second half of each years racing has proven a much happier hunting ground than the circuits which form the first half of the F1 calendar.
Another win in Zandvoort, would see Norris at worst a single point behind his team mate who after some early self flagellation this year now appears brimming with confidence and self assurance. There has been a significant shift in the British drivers’ mental approach to the race weekends, with him now focusing on the positive on not obsessing over small issues which go wrong.
The pressure mounts as Norris counters
Its almost as though Lando has taken a happy pill but meanwhile his team mate maybe showing the first signs of pressure. At the recent British Grand Prix, Piastri was handed a ten second penalty for a safety car infringement at a wet restart. This cost him the win of the race, which went to Norris, something the Aussie was not amused about in his post race interviews.
“I’m not going to say much. I’ll get myself in trouble,” Piastri told Jenson Button in his podium interview. “Apparently you can’t brake behind the safety car any more. I did it for five laps before that,” fumed the Australian. Then in Budapest when asked whether he preferred to race Leclerc for the win, or to finish ahead of his team mate, Piastri snapped back on the radio that he “didn’t care” about the Ferrari driver, and it was “Norris” he wanted to beat.
In the end to was a strategic ‘error’ from McLaren which cost Piastri the win. The team chose to cover off the two stop strategy of Charles Leclerc, meanwhile Lando cannily switched to a one stop whilst languishing in P4, given even a late dash for tyres would see him finish no worse off.
When asked if he was surprised when told off Norris shifting to a one stop race in the FIA press conference, Piastri appeared to answer a different question. “Yes and no,” he said. “At that point, he didn’t really have much to lose, so it wasn’t a huge surprise. I don’t know if trying to undercut Leclerc was the right call in the end, but we can go through it after.”
Upset F1 teams not involved in FIA rule change
Montoya says Piastri “agitated”
Of course it was logical for Norris to choose the strategy he did, but Piastri was clearly questioning whether the team had made the right call in focusing his strategy based on Ferrari’s for Leclerc. The reality is that Oscar has had two race wins snatched from his grasp at Silverstone and in Hungary and even if its just the luck of the draw, he is clearly unhappy about the situation.
Having made the choice to stop early to try and undercut the leader Charles Leclerc, McLaren committed their leading driver in the race to a two stop. Zak Brown disingenuously suggested after the race, that Piastri was offered a one stop later, but turned it down. Yet the die was cast once the Aussie had made his first stop some thirteen laps before Norris, no way would his tyres have performed well enough over such unbalanced stints during the Grand Prix.
Ex-F1 racer and Indycar champion, Juan Pablo Montoya believes Piastri is now feeling the intensity of maximising every point this season. “Nobody guarantees that McLaren will be the best car next year,” Montoya explains. “It’s a new regulation with new theories. Everything is completely new. It could be that McLaren go out and win everything, or we could get to next year and McLaren won’t make the top 10.
One title, two rivals
“The reality is that Oscar and Lando could now have their only chance to be world champion. It causes a bit of drama. They got along very well and everything, but I’m telling you, look at Oscar. His comments are getting heated, he’s getting agitated. One driver [Norris] is trying to get back on track, and the other is trying to stay on the rails.”
Yet neither driver has been in this position before and with potentially just one shot at winning an F1 drivers’ title on offer, the closer they remain the points standing, the higher the tension will grow for both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. Whilst the glory awaits for one of the McLaren pair, so does for the other the crushing knowledge that you lost a championship to your team mate.
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Lewis Hamilton is experiencing his worst ever season in Formula One. Fourteen race weekends into the campaign and the new arrival at Ferrari has yet to claim a Grand Prix podium. Should this extend beyond eighteen race weekends, Hamilton will claim the unenviable record of being the Ferrari driver who went the longest after joining the team without a top three finish.
There’s a general concern in the paddock for Hamilton’s state of mind, after he described his performance in Hungary as “useless” eve suggesting the team “change the driver.” Le Mans 9 times winning legendary Tom Kristensen said this week that, “people in the paddock, they worry about Lewis. He one hundred per cent has a contract for next year. Ferrari wants him to do well the most.”
The former Mercedes man has struggled to adapt to life at Ferrari and the very different culture and processes which exist in Italy, far removed from anything he knew during his time in Woking or Brackley. Add to this the fact the SF-25 appears better suited to his team mate and in some way its understandable to see Lewis in the mood he was in during the weekend in Budapest…. READ MORE
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