Villeneuve, who made a habit of targeting Daniel Ricciardo<\/a>, also took aim at Piastri earlier in the year<\/a> and now has dug the boot in after Piastri\u2019s rare off weekend in Baku.<\/p>\n It was an uncharacteristically error-riddled weekend for Piastri, who crashed out of qualifying and the race, prompting Villeneuve to declare it both a \u201cvery bad show\u201d from the Australian and his teammate Lando Norris. <\/p>\n \u201cEven more so from Piastri,\u201d Villeneuve added, speaking to OLGB.<\/p>\n Villeneuve went on to describe Piastri\u2019s driving as \u201cerratic\u201d and believes his bubble \u201cwas a bit burst\u201d by the crash in last Sunday\u2019s race. <\/p>\n \u201cYou could tell that Piastri was on the edge all weekend for some reason,\u201d the 1997 F1 world champion said.<\/p>\n \u201cHis driving was erratic from Friday onwards, the mistake in qualifying the mistake on the grid followed by a mistake right away on the first lap he wasn\u2019t in it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really odd because he\u2019s got quite a big lead. But we have often said being the hunted, being the prey is a very difficult pressure to carry. And it\u2019s really affected him, this weekend anyway, which is crazy. <\/p>\n \u201cNow compared to Norris, he didn\u2019t lose many points. You just need another weekend like this, and the pressure is on even more. We\u2019ve always perceived Piastri as being this cold, immovable block. But that\u2019s not what we saw this weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cPiastri\u2019s crash showed that his bubble there was a bit burst.\u201d<\/p>\n ‘Certainly not my finest moment’ | 02:58<\/p>\n While Piastri has been calm and poised under pressure throughout his young career, Villeneuve admitted all drivers are capable of having moments like the Australian had in Baku. <\/p>\n \u201cEven Max has had some weekends where we\u2019re like, OK, maybe that one was a little over the top,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Plus, it wasn\u2019t like Piastri was the only one who struggled for McLaren, with teammate Norris unable to capitalise on the championship leader\u2019s blunders after finishing seventh. <\/p>\n \u201cThe curious thing is it was the two drivers and the team. The whole thing. Not just one aspect. There was no sparkle particularly from Norris all weekend,\u201d Villeneuve said.<\/p>\n \u201cHis mistakes were less costly because he didn\u2019t hit the wall, but he should have qualified at least P2. Then he just went a little bit wide, messed up and then had a lacklustre race. It was incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former world champion Jacques Villeneuve already isn\u2019t popular with Australian F1 fans and he won\u2019t be winning over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-169615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758410048_740_poster-fallback.png\"\/)
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