Oscar Piastri had an incredible F1 season in 2025. He was winning races and was leading the championship for most of the season. He was ready to take it all — until he wasn’t anymore. In the end, he lost the championship to his teammate Lando Norris and had to succumb to P3 in the championship ranking, falling behind Max Verstappen. During a High Performance Podcast held at the McLaren Technology Centre, Oscar Piastri discussed his challenging moments of the last F1 season.
Piastri: “It was obviously a very long season”
Leading the championship puts pressure on the driver to maintain it. Similarly, being close behind the championship leader puts them under pressure to take the lead themselves.
“I mean, there was a few tough moments. I guess the pressure in some ways from different angles,” recalled Oscar Piastri when he’s looking back at the biggest lesson from tough moments from his 2025 F1 season.
“When you’re ahead in the championship, you know, you’re doing something right. That’s why you have the lead, but you’re also the one being hunted if you’re behind. And you’re trying to maintain that advantage.
“You can only look behind in some ways. It’s difficult to not do that. But then when you’re behind, of course, you’ve got the mentality of being the hunter, but you’ve also got the gap to close. You’ve got to close it. And I think just the kind of dynamics of that a little bit maybe was a bit of an eye-opener. It was obviously a very long season,” the Australian explained.
Piastri is rather hunted than being a hunter in F1
There are two types of positions an F1 driver can find themselves in: They can be a hunter or they can be the hunted. Both are demanding and full of pressure.
Oscar Piastri said he prefers being the hunted F1 driver, rather than being a hunter. He explained his decision as follows:
“I think the hunted. I’ve always enjoyed being in that position because, again, generally that means you’re doing something right or something better than the people you’re racing against. There’s that confidence of you’re probably in that position because you’ve won races or been on the podium a lot or things like that.
“You know, if it’s chopping and changing every single race, then yeah, if you’re the hunted by two points, then it’s a bit different if it’s by 30. But for me, that’s always been a nice position because you’ve got a little bit of buffer and you’ve got the races and the results to back up that position normally. So I think that was probably the biggest thing.”
Oscar Piastri had lead the 2025 F1 Championship for 15 consecutive weekends. A disappointing race for him at the Mexico City GP resulted in the loss of the lead. Naturally, that meant that he turned from hunted to being a hunter and that put more pressure on him.
On top of that, Piastri struggled with getting the maximum performance at Austin and Mexico, heavily beaten by Lando Norris on both weekends as the Aussie struggled on low grip surfaces.
“There was a few technical things, a few tracks at the end of the year where I had to drive the car very differently that I probably didn’t get on top of as quickly as I should have,” the McLaren driver admitted, “Probably some things as a team we’d do again in a slightly different way as well.
“There’s little bits everywhere. There wasn’t one glaringly obvious thing, but you put enough of those things together and sometimes it doesn’t quite happen,” concluded Piastri.
