Following recent difficulties, Oscar Piastri heads into the F1 São Paulo GP sitting second in the Drivers’ Championship. Teammate Lando Norris leads with 357 points, just one point ahead of Piastri, who has 356. Behind, Max Verstappen is closing in with 321 points after having had a strong recent run.
Championship mentality
When asked if the fact he is now the chaser rather than the one being chased affects his mentality, Piastri felt there is no real difference. The gap is a single point heading into the weekend.
“Not massively, I don’t think. Especially when it’s essentially even,” he noted. “Maybe it doesn’t change a whole lot, but for me the mindset all year has been about trying to just have the best weekends I can and ultimately drive as fast as I can. At no point through the weekend have I kind of factored in more than normal my risk-taking approach or anything like that.
“So, I think for me that doesn’t change anything now that the championship order is a bit different. I’ll be trying to just go as fast as I can and take the same risks that I normally do because nine times out of ten, that’s a good balance to have.”
“Lacking performance” in Austin and Mexico
Piastri has not been on the podium since his P3 finish in Monza. In Baku, he had a tough opening lap, jumping the start, stalling, falling to P20, and then crashing. The Australian also binned it in Q3.
He finished 4th in Singapore after a tense battle with his teammate, before suffering a second DNF in the US Sprint. He went on to finish P5 in Austin and Mexico, losing crucial points.
Asked if any external factors had played a role in his recent struggles, Piastri explained: “I think Baku was obviously a bad weekend, but for extremely different reasons. It was a messy weekend from start to finish with a lot of different factors. It was a strained weekend just in terms of tyre usage as well and doing all the practice sessions on C6 tyres. We had a couple of issues on both cars, so it was just a messy weekend from start to finish, but ultimately the pace was pretty good. I was just trying a bit too hard again.”
He continued: “I think Austin and Mexico being quite different in that I actually feel like I executed reasonably well, but the lap time was just not there. I think we’ve got some evidence as to why it’s not been there, but the question as to why some things have not been working the last couple of weekends and why some things have been, that part I’m not sure we’ll ever know the answer to, but I think knowing that there’s a difference is the biggest thing. So I don’t think Baku you could argue yes, there was some other things that maybe crept in, but I think in Mexico and Austin it’s just been about lacking performance and trying to find out where to find it.”
Low grip circuit challenges
Adapting to the soft tyres and low-grip conditions at Austin and Mexico has been a key learning curve for Piastri.
“I think Austin and Mexico are a bit different to quite a lot of other circuits we’ve been to, I think even just when you look at the tyre usage on both of these weekend, to have two weekends where the soft tyre is in Mexico, apart from the C5 and C6 which is kind of off on its own, to have the softest tyres, the tyre to be on in qualifying and the race is not that usual, and that has been a big difference from earlier in the season,” Piastri explained.
He added: “So I think there is something that’s been a bit different, I don’t know what exactly that is, but I think it’s just been in some circuits, maybe in a corner or two where you need to adapt to things like that and drive a bit differently, but the last couple of weekends it’s been you needed to drive differently all the time in a way that I’ve not had to for the whole year, so I think just trying to understand more of what I need to shift to and how that feels has been the biggest learning curve with that,” he noted.
Piastri concluded on the matter: “But I think when you look at the tyre usage we’ve had, things have been a little bit different, I don’t think anything has changed necessarily, but there’s been something a bit different with the last couple of weekends compared to the majority of races.”
