Oscar Piastri’s performance at the United States Grand Prix was so out of character that McLaren launched an immediate inquiry into his car just to verify there was no secret technical problem behind his lack of pace.
“This is certainly one of the most important points that we need to review, which is the fact that Oscar in qualifying and in the race seemed to have a couple of tenths that he was not able to fully realise and that possibly was available in the car,” McLaren principal Andrea Stella said, per Racer, on Sunday night.
“We are actually now checking that we are completely happy with the set-up of the car, the set-up of the floor, that everything is as intended from a car point of view.”
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But with no sign of anything unexpected in the data, it’s hard to escape from the conclusion that Piastri owns the poor result.
That means he owns the rate at which title rivals Lando Norris and Max Verstappen are shrinking his championship advantage.
He led Norris by 34 points and Verstappen by 104 points just four rounds ago. Now they’re knocking on the door, just 14 points and 40 points behind respectively.
But as tempting as it is to man the panic stations, there are three important reasons to keep calm as the championship heads towards its tight and unpredictable conclusion.
‘Far too close’ – Oscar calls for parity | 03:25
AUSTIN WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE A TOUGH TRACK
The Circuit of the Americas has always been firmly in the Norris column when weighing up which tracks would suit which of the McLaren drivers.
While Norris has been the better performer over their two years as teammate prior to 2025 — no real surprise given his experience advantage — COTA is one of the few at which his superiority has been absolute.
Piastri’s record relative to Norris in Austin is abysmal by his standards.
Over three years they’ve competed in five grand prix qualifying sessions and six races, including sprints.
On average Piastri has been beaten by 0.486 seconds and six grid places.
In the races he’s been outscored 59-20 and beaten by an average of 3.6 places. During their time together Norris has scored on average 19.6 points per round, while Piastri has taken home just 6.7 points per round.
That they should turn up to COTA this season and Norris should have the upper hand is unsurprising.
If it’s any consolation, it’s worth nothing that Piastri qualified closer than his average qualifying deficit and scored more than his three-year average.
Why is that the case?
Stella has some clues.
“I think we know with Oscar that when the conditions are such that we have low grip, you really need to challenge the car, lean on the understeer, oversteer, locking,” he explained.
“This is an area of his driving that has an opportunity to improve, and in Oscar’s standards, this means that he we will improve pretty fast.
“I think [on Sunday] we got quite a lot of information that adds to the information we got yesterday. Already [pre-race] we had some conversations with Oscar as to what we can do to extract more.
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Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.Source: Getty Images
“I think this is just data to learn, and Oscar will learn pretty soon.”
Rapid learning is part of Piastri’s profile as a racing driver, from session to session, round to round and season to season.
That in itself could be part of his issue this weekend and in Austin in particular. For as long as he’s been in Formula 1, this round has been run to the sprint format.
Arriving already with a certain discomfort with the circuit, the lack of practice time before the first competitive session of the weekend immediately puts him on the back foot without the time to build up to the challenge.
That was compounded this year by the first-lap sprint crash that left him and the team desperately lacking mileage in race conditions, making an already tough weekend even worse.
This won’t be the situation at other rounds. While two sprints remain this season, Piastri has already proved himself more competitive in both São Paulo and Lusail.
Austin has all the hallmarks of being a one-off.
HIS FORM HASN’T ACTUALLY BEEN THAT BAD
The numbers behind Piastri’s slide are undeniable. He’s lost 64 points to Verstappen in the last four rounds, and to Norris he’s shipped 20 points during the same time.
Those are numbers are representative of Verstappen’s tremendous form in the second part of the season. To be fair to Norris, he’s also clearly found another level since the midseason break — or perhaps since his power unit failure in the Netherlands took some pressure off him in this title fight.
But they’re not necessarily reflective of Piastri’s form.
Let’s consider it race by race.
He started back from the midseason break with a comfortable victory from pole position that was assured even before Norris broke down.
In Italy he was narrowly outqualified by Norris, but he was the cleaner operator.
Consider, for example, that McLaren — in a contentious move — asked him to slipstream Norris in Q2 just to ensure his chief championship rival qualified inside the top 10, when the Briton subsequently pipped Piastri by a place.
Piastri and Norris collide at turn one | 02:31
Norris had fractionally better race pace, but the grand prix rapidly became a stalemate as Verstappen sprinted off into the distance. Even then, Piastri was still close enough to his teammate to capitalise on his slow pit stop, precipitating the awkward team orders situation.
No signs of a slow-down so far.
Azerbaijan was Piastri’s first genuinely poor weekend of the year, crashing out of qualifying and then out of the race in a dire 24 hours.
He was scrappy from start to premature end, but even then it wasn’t as if he was miles off the pace.
“Obviously, you’re never going to feel amazing after a weekend like this,” he said at the time. “But ultimately I felt like the pace has still been good this weekend, and I think it’s rare that I have so many executional errors.
“I would be much more concerned if these errors were because I was trying to make up time or do things like that.”
Stella described it as one of those inexplicable weekends every great driver has, and so far there’s not really anything to suggest otherwise.
Singapore followed. It’s a track at which Norris has historically had an upper hand, but Piastri narrowly outqualified him by 0.062 seconds.
He finished behind Norris only because of the controversial first-lap collision between them for which Norris has been internally punished. Given the dearth of overtaking in the race, that was decisive to their classified order.
It’s only in the United States at the weekend that Piastri’s pace has really deserted him — where his 0.3-second deficit to Norris was irrefutable and inexplicable.
“I feel like it [Singapore] was a good weekend apart from, obviously, the race results,” he said, per Racer.
“I think here [in Austin], yes, it’s been a struggle for me. I don’t feel like there’s been anything like I’ve made any major mistakes or from a driving side of things; it’s just not clicking.
“It’s not been so much of overdriving, it’s just been that I haven’t felt comfortable with the car, really.
“I think that’s been the story of this weekend, but I don’t think it’s been the story in the last one.”
But there’s no reason Austin can’t be the aberration of an otherwise consistently fast season.
HE STILL LEADS THE CHAMPIONSHIP
Momentum isn’t the same as actuality. Even if momentum is with Piastri’s title rivals, he’s still in the enviable position of leading the world championship.
He’s never been in a position to grind out second-place finishes and win the title, but the calculus for him today relative to the Dutch Grand Prix is surprisingly similar: two more victories would see him put one hand on the title.
Two more wins would mean his lead over Norris extends to at least 28 points, which would allow him to finish second to his teammate at all three other races. It would push Verstappen out to at least 54 points, snuffing out his charge.
Even one more victory would change the operating environment.
“I think we need to be perfect until the end to have a chance,” Verstappen acknowledged. “We caught up a lot, but at the same time, the gaps [in performance] are very small.
“I think every weekend you need to try and be perfect, and that’s what we’ll try to do until the end.”
And while 14 points his less than half Piastri’s season-high 34-point lead he had after the Dutch Grand Prix, it’s far from the smallest his advantage has been whittled down to this season.
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He took the lead at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix with a 10-point lead. Since then he’s had a lead of fewer than 14 points five times: after Imola, Monte Carlo, Spain, Silverstone and Budapest.
Each time he’s rebuilt his buffer.
This isn’t a place he hasn’t been before — in fact he’s been here in prior seasons, having won three junior titles in different ways.
“I think it’s definitely been a useful experience that I’ve tried to lean on,” he said. “No championship is the same, but I think I’ve kind of experience both ends of that — closing out Formula 2 and in some ways hanging on in Formula 3.
“I kind of know how both of those feel, and one of them is a lot nicer than the other.
“I’m just trying to do the best job that I can each weekend and ultimately score as many points as I can. If I focus on that and keep doing the things I’ve been doing well this year, it’ll hopefully look more like closing out.”
Momentum and form count for a lot with five rounds remaining, but no-one would trade championship points for promise alone.
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BUT THERE’S A CATCH
There are lots of reasons not to be unduly concerned by Piastri’s slowing points accumulation. As Stella himself said, it would be entirely on-brand for the Australian to turn up at the next race and fire on all cylinders as though none of these conversations had ever happened.
But there are more pitfalls in his future.
This weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix is a big one among them.
It’s another bogey track, much like Austin.
The results aren’t as stark as they were for COTA, but the form is.
In 2023 Piastri qualified seventh after Norris bombed out of Q1 in 19th after an error-prone performance.
Despite the yawning gap in starting positions, Norris charged through to finish ahead of his teammate, taking the flag fifth ahead of Piastri in eighth.
Their roles were reversed last year, with Piastri dumped out of qualifying in 17th while Norris qualified third.
But Piastri’s charge was considerably more muted, resulting in eighth while Norris finished second and just 4.7 seconds off the lead.
Despite the Austin and Mexico City layouts being markedly different, there are some interesting similarities in conditions.
Both track surfaces are very hot and low in grip. In Mexico that latter trait is exacerbated by the lack of downforce available in the thinner air at high altitude.
Oscar watches on as McLaren celebrates | 01:04
It’s a combination of characteristics with which Piastri seems to struggle — certainly he did in Texas.
There are other less concrete reasons to hedge on Piastri turning things around.
This was the point last year at which his stunning run of European form was halted. He put the discrepancy between his championship-leading European campaign and his quiet final flyaway down to a lack of familiarity with the circuits — the junior categories race mostly in Europe, so his personal data bank on non-European tracks was much smaller.
That’s still a factor in only his third campaign.
None of that means Piastri has to be on a downward trajectory. It doesn’t change the fact that his speed, for the most part, hasn’t left him in the second part of the season.
It does mean, however, that this weekend is another danger race, and with two motivated title rivals on a charge, Mexico City could be another exercise in damage limitation.