Just five race weekends ago, Oscar Piastri was riding high and looked nailed on to claim the 2025 Formula One drivers’ championship. In fact after the Grand Prix in Zandvoort, The Australian driver was 104 points ahead of Max Verstappen and 34 points in front of his team mate Lando Norris.
Now with six Grand Prix remaining the picture looks very different. Verstappen has almost halved the gap to Piastri which stands at 55 points before the US Grand Prix, where the championship leader will start from a lowly sixth place. Further he is just 22 points behind Lando Norris who lines up alongside Verstappen on the front row of the grid in Austin, but Norris was 3/10ths behind the world champion after two runs in Q3, despite Verstappen failing to make the start/finish line in time to begin his second push lap in the session.
McLaren’s usual calm, collected leadership lost the plot yesterday when a turn one incident took out both of their cars at the start of the Sprint. Zak Brown reacted hastily calling it “amateur hour”, blaming Nico Hulkenberg for failing to utilise his years of experience.
McLaren management too quick to apportion blame
Andrea Stella refused to mention names, but insisted that “certain drivers” should have shown “more prudence”, something he repeated more than once in his frustration. Yet the replays clearly showed it was Oscar Piastri who caused the turn one chaos by his lack of experience when he practically stopped his car in turn one to attempt the cut back on his team mate.
Firstly the move was pointless give Norris had not run too deep and it would have left Piastri on the outside coming into the right hander of turn two. Secondly, there were always going to be cars on the Aussie’s inside given the high width of turn one at the Circuit of the Americas and his 180 degree steering lock manoeuvre left Hulkenmberg nowhere to go.
Zack Brown was later challenged over his initial views, admitting he couldn’t “put this one on Hulk.” Yet having punished Norris for his slight touch on his team mate in Singapore, questions will inevitably arise about how the team will now deal with Piastri. The mysterious “consequences” the team announced Lando would suffer on Saturday’s for the remainder of the year became quickly evident following the ten holding him responsible for ‘touching’ his team mate in Singapore.
Wheels come off for Piastri in qualifying
During qualifying McLaren drivers alternate each weekend giving each driver in a qualifying session the choice of whether they run first or second on tack during. Yesterday Piastri chose to run last in Q1, but when the chips were down in the second session and he needed a lap, he clearly chose to run first to avoid any yellow or red flag issues whilst Norris was second.
In final qualifying Piastri reverted to taking the petered later slot for his final run, but the Australian who has appeared rattled since his mistakes in Baku was way off the pace – half a second behind pole sitter Verstappen and two tenths off his team mate.
Of course any driver and team can have a bad weekend, but at a circuit where McLaren were expected to dominate in their favoured high temperatures, they were not even the second best team. Ferrari whose car is supposedly useless when the barometer rises, claimed P3 and P5, both ahead of Piastri in P6.
A despairing Norris in the media pen after the session revealed how bad the MCL39 had become. “It’s just impossible to drive, I don’t know why,” Norris told Sky Sports. “It was just clear from Q1 already, like every lap we did, we were between three tenths to half a second off of Max.
Piastri unhappy with his McLaren
Norris despondent with his car
“It wasn’t just that they were very strong – it was more we were like [11th and 12th] in Q1 and weren’t a mile away from getting knocked out, so I was pretty worried after Q1.
“It’s just a handful to drive. Just every bump, every kerb, lap to lap different, just a handful, which is not the most common thing we say about our car, but it’s clear that we both were struggling today with it quite a bit,” he added.
A McLaren driver worried about getting out of Q1, really? Things are clearly on a downward spiral for the papaya liveried team and should Piastri fail to score decent points in the Grand Prix the word “crisis” to describe what’s going on at the MTC, is no longer inappropriate. Across the last four race weekends, Vertsappen has now reeled in Oscar Piastri by some 49 points. The momentum is clearly with the world champion.
On Friday the pace of the McLaren’s looked good and the drop off overnight was something which puzzled Lando Norris. “I don’t know why we’re struggling so much more than yesterday, where I was a bit more comfortable, and obviously lap time-wise a lot quicker yesterday than we were today,” he said.
Senior paddock individual reveals McLaren “consequences” for Norris
The crucial US Grand Prix 2025
“Clearly the track was a bit worse, the wind was a bit worse, and it seems to have impacted us a little bit more than some others, so we’ll try and understand why and learn from it. It’s almost a surprise to be P2, so I’ll take it.”
In an F1 Sprint weekend the teams have just one practice session to figure out the setup for their cars, yet the Sprint itself is a session where teams learn more anymore about their cars as they can now change them before Grand Prix qualifying, something McLaren were unable to do.
Despite his car looking inferior to the Red Bull, Norris ever the racer was asked whether a podium finish and beating his team mate was the plan for Sunday. “I want to win. I hate standing on the second or third step,” Norris said with a grin. “I’d rather not be there, I’m here to win the races and try to do that, so I’ll do everything I need to do to take that opportunity.”
So much hangs on this afternoons Grand Prix. Were Piastri to have another DNF – and starting mid pack is a far more risky place than up front – and Verstappen go on to claim the victory in a car which looks superior to the McLaren the points lead will crash between the pair to just 30. Game on for the fans who may see the greatest ever comeback in the the history of the Formula One drivers’ championship.
Verstappen gets new team mate announcement
Red Bull’s driver line-up for 2026 is slowly taking shape, and reports from the Dutch Newspaper De Limburger claims that the energy drink giant has made its decision on who will partner Max Verstappen. The report also hints at a complex situation involving Yuki Tsunoda.
Shaping the 2026 Red Bull line-up – While three seats remain open across Red Bull Racing and its sister team VCARB, insiders say the actual number of vacancies is smaller. Rising star Isack Hadjar is reportedly set to be promoted to the senior Red Bull squad, a move that has been an open secret in the paddock for some time. De Limburger claims that Red Bull’s top figures, including Helmut Marko, see Hadjar as the long-term successor to Verstappen, who has dominated the sport in recent years.
Marko is said to be eager to make the news official, though internal disagreements have delayed the announcement. Some within the Red Bull leadership have been cautious about promoting Hadjar too quickly, fearing that pitting a young driver against Verstappen too soon could hinder his development….. READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
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