Demand for Oscar Piastri in the driver market contradicts claims that the Australian’s reputation has collapsed this season, according to six-time Bathurst winner Garth Tander.

Piastri qualified seventh and finished fifth in Barcelona, but the result required him to capitalise on a poor start for Isack Hadjar and technical failures for both Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc, who had been on track to finish ahead of him in a mystifyingly lacklustre performance.

The result, which saw him finish two places and 34.942 seconds behind podium-getting teammate Lando Norris, left him sixth in the title standings, 88 points off the lead.

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The anonymous performance triggered some damning criticism from Sky Sports UK pundits Nico Rosberg and Jacques Villeneuve.

“It’s not going too well for him as of late,” 2016 world champion Rosberg said. “His market value has taken a bit of a plunge in the last weeks and months.

“It’s a bit strange, and he really needs to work on that now, because he’s falling down.”

Villeneuve, the 1997 champion said Piastri had “collapsed”.

“We saw the trend last year,” he said. “Halfway through the season he was the talk of the paddock … and then he collapsed, and his form went down, and he hasn’t recovered. It’s really odd.

“Nobody’s talking about him anymore, and that’s in the space of, what, six months, even less. It’s very odd.”

The claims drew a sharp rebuke for 2007 Supercars champion Garth Tander.

“I thought their take as very odd, the way that they have rated Oscar’s season so far,” he told MotorRacing 360. “He’s only five points behind Lando. Oscar didn’t have a great weekend at Barcelona, but that’s one weekend.”

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Tander suggested reports that Red Bull Racing had Piastri at the top of its list of targets to cover Max Verstappen’s potential exit put the lie to claims that his reputation had tanked.

“Say, for example, hypothetically, Max Verstappen leaves Red Bull and he goes to McLaren and he takes Oscar Piastri’s seat because his stocks are so low — according to those two,” he said. “Who do you reckon is the first person Red Bull are going to call?

“They’re only going to call one person to fill Max Verstappen’s seat. Who do you reckon that might be? Oscar Piastri.

“If a seat became available at Mercedes that Max Verstappen isn’t filling, who do you reckon they’re calling? Oscar Piastri.

“His name will be at the top of every team’s list if there was availability to get him. I don’t get that take at all.”

James Courtney, the 2010 Supercars champion, said McLaren’s step down the competitive order this year was a more compelling explanation for Piastri’s lack of headline-grabbing results.

“I think it’s a pretty harsh summary of his season,” he said. “I think McLaren as a team hasn’t shined, so then it’s hard for him to look good.

“I think last year they had such a dominant car and great performances over the last 18 months up until this point. I think this year, just as a team, they’ve struggled. I think Zak Brown would admit to that and say it wasn’t good enough, and the whole team [would], and that’s why they’re working so hard to try and lift as a team.

“For [Rosberg and Villeneuve] to come out with that, I think it’s incredibly harsh. Maybe they’ve just been out of it a little too long.

“I think there are a lot of things going against [McLaren] at the moment.”

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Tander suggested Formula 1’s equalisation measures, which allocate less wind tunnel and computer development time to teams at the top of the championship table, have played a role in hamstringing McLaren’s title defence.

McLaren cruised to last year’s constructors crown ahead of Mercedes, Red Bull Racing — which committed more resource to 2025 to pursue Verstappen’s surprise drivers title bid — and Ferrari.

“The result of their success as a team, McLaren and Red Bull, is they have got less development time, less time in the wind tunnel, less CFD availability under the regulations compared to all the other teams,” he said.

“It’s no surprise that the two teams battling it out for last year’s [drivers] championship are probably struggling more than we would expect, and Mercedes and Ferrari, which finished [second] and fourth in last year’s constructors championship are having a strong start to this year.

“They are absolutely paying the price. It’s a bit like the draft in the NRL or AFL. That’s why they’ve set up the wind tunnel time and CFD [restrictions] — it’s so that if you have a great year, you’ll have less tools to make your car fast for next year. It gives everyone else a bit of a leg up.”