After the F1 Mexico City GP, Jack Villeneuve addressed Oscar Piastri’s lack of momentum ahead of the final charge for the championship.
Oscar Piastri is well and truly in the fight for the 2025 F1 Drivers’ Championship. He has been leading it since the Saudi Arabia GP. However, he has struggled in recent races, which has led to him losing his lead to teammate Lando Norris. The two McLaren drivers are now separated by just 1 point.
But Lando Norris is not his only concern. Four-time world champion Max Verstappen is currently on a comeback like no other and has put himself in a very strong position with his recent form. With 4 races and 2 sprint races left to go, the title fight couldn’t be closer.
But what has been the cause of Piastri’s recent bad form? And is there anything he can do to revive his championship hopes?
Lando Norris stepping up
At the start of the season, Oscar Piastri looked to be the firm favourite for the F1 championship. His results were consistent, and he had won four of the first six races. However, when looking at the most recent six races, he only has one victory. A horrendous weekend at Baku was followed by very average ones at COTA and Mexico.
Could Piastri be struggling with the pressure of leading the championship?
Following the F1 Mexico City GP, Jack Villeneuve spoke to Sky Sports about his thoughts on Piastri’s recent performance. He believes that what has actually happened is that Piastri was able to take advantage of a struggling Lando Norris at the start of the season. As the year has progressed, Norris’s performance has improved and returned toward 2024 levels, which has left Piastri behind.
“We didn’t have an extremely fantastic Lando early in the season, not the Lando we had at the end of the year. As we kept saying, that’s because Piastri has stepped up, he’s now on Lando’s pace and even quicker.
“But was it actually Piastri stepping up, or Lando that just wasn’t on it? He kept saying he wasn’t very comfortable with the car. And maybe that made Piastri complacent a bit.
“Lando is driving faster and better than he’s been all season. And Piastri is not stepping up; he’s already at his limit. And when you do that, when you have to go that extra two tenths … suddenly you find problems in the cars that did not exist.”
Pushing the limit
With Norris’s and Verstappen’s recent performances, Piastri needs find another gear if he wishes to win what could be his first championship. However, it isn’t as easy as it seems. Doing so means that he needs to fully push the limits of his McLaren, which can often lead to mistakes, according to the 1997 World Champion.
“When you drive within the limit, the car is perfect, it’s easy. You drive, you save your tyres. And suddenly you have to of a couple of tenths faster, you can’t drive the car anymore. Everything is wrong and you don’t know why.
“Because right now we have the same car, it hasn’t evolved that much, though there’s no reason for it to be driven differently. Same tyres, it’s Pirelli’s, they don’t change. Sometimes they’re softer, sometimes they’re not.
“The track is warmer and so on, but there isn’t that big of a difference. So it just steps your teammate to step up a little bit and you’re realising, oh, how do I do that? And suddenly you drive 10th stop, nothing works and that’s it.”
Getting in his head
As Norris continues to pull away from Piastri on the track, the battle becomes one of the mind. Villeneuve believes that the gap may continue to grow, as Piastri becomes more desperate to close the gap to his teammate. In doing so, he may feel the need to make changes that won’t necessarily pay off.
“It gets in your head and you just get slower and slower and slower and you start inventing setups that don’t exist. You start doubting your way of driving. You look at the data and you say, my teammate is one tenth quicker in that corner, I need to drive differently.
“And that’s when it goes wrong. You have to remember what you were doing that was good and just step up a little bit.”
