{"id":181505,"date":"2025-10-01T02:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T02:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/181505\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T02:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T02:47:09","slug":"mclaren-oscar-piastri-title-battle-singapore-grand-prix-preview-jolyon-palmer-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/181505\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren, Oscar Piastri, title battle, Singapore Grand Prix preview, Jolyon Palmer comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar Piastri<\/a> is “very keen” to hit the track again at the Singapore Grand Prix<\/a> as he looks to bounce back from a poor performance in Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n

The championship leader’s struggles began during qualifying, where a crash in Q3<\/a> forced him to start from ninth place on the grid.<\/p>\n

His weekend then culminated in another crash on the opening lap of the feature race<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Australian jumped the race start before stalling on the grid, which caused him to fall to the back of the pack before the opening corner.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri sits in his McLaren ahead of the 2025 Imola Grand Prix.\u00a0LAT Images<\/p>\n

His race ended soon after, when he locked up and crashed at turn five. He was the only driver to retire from the grand prix.<\/p>\n

Piastri was handed a five-second penalty for the jump start. However, the penalty will not carry over to the next race in Singapore despite not having been served.<\/p>\n

Despite not adding any points, Piastri tops the drivers’ standings and is on course for his first world title with a 25-point advantage over McLaren<\/a> teammate Lando Norris<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Briton had a golden opportunity to gain ground in the pair’s championship battle, but could only manage a seventh-place finish, narrowing Piastri’s lead by six points.<\/p>\n

Round 18 of the title fight lands in Singapore, where Norris showed his winning pace last season.<\/p>\n

\"Max<\/p>\n

Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, and Oscar Piastri stood on the podium at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix.\u00a0Gongora\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Singapore Grand Prix is renowned as one of the most physically demanding events on the calendar because of the intense heat and humidity, despite its night-time slot.<\/p>\n

McLaren hopes that the circuit’s challenging conditions will give them an edge over their rivals.<\/p>\n

“I’m very keen to get back in the cockpit,” Piastri said in the lead-up to the grand prix.<\/p>\n

“On paper, and with the temperatures involved in Singapore, our car has been proven to be comfortable in the past<\/p>\n

“With that in mind, I’m looking forward to a really positive weekend.”<\/p>\n

Piastri’s best performance in Singapore came last season, where he secured a third-place finish behind Norris and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n

Former driver Jolyon Palmer believes Piastri’s difficulty in Baku was the result of the intense pressure he is facing in the championship fight.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri climbs out of his damaged McLaren after crashing during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

“I think we saw, just purely, a chink in the armour,” he told the F1 Nation podcast.<\/p>\n

“We just saw a driver making a really basic human mistake. I can’t see anything other than [that] he just got jittery.<\/p>\n

“That’s just pressure, it’s jitters, and the rest of it was compounded by the first mistake.”<\/p>\n

After Baku, Palmer is concerned that the high-pressure nature of the Singapore circuit will make it difficult for Piastri to move past his mistakes.<\/p>\n

“Normally, I would say park it and look ahead. The problem is that the next track is Singapore, so there’re similar issues,” he said.<\/p>\n

“A street circuit again, if you make mistakes, you are going to find the barriers and be on the back foot. It will be punishing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri is “very keen” to hit the track again at the Singapore Grand Prix as he looks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-181505","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\/181505","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=181505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}