{"id":224870,"date":"2025-10-19T10:07:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T10:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224870\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T10:07:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T10:07:11","slug":"oscar-piastri-mistakes-revealed-as-lando-norris-telemetry-emerges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224870\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri mistakes revealed as Lando Norris telemetry emerges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar Piastri has suffered another disappointing qualifying session \u2014 his second in the last three race weekends \u2014 giving his teammate another clear opportunity to close the gap in the Drivers\u2019 Championship.<\/p>\n

Why Oscar struggled this weekend and can he turn things around on Sunday?<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri hands Lando Norris another chance in Austin<\/p>\n

Piastri made his first big qualifying mistake just two race weekends ago in Azerbaijan, when an error left him only ninth on the starting grid. Although, luckily for him, Norris wasn\u2019t able to make a big dent in the points gap that day, the same opportunity has now presented itself again in the United States.<\/p>\n

From the very beginning of the weekend, the Australian never looked fully at ease on track. The results from the first and only free practice session, as well as from the Sprint Qualifying session, were early warning signs that Norris was likely to be the stronger side of the garage this time.<\/p>\n

Piastri had the chance to change that perception in Saturday\u2019s Sprint race, and in fact, he had a very real opportunity to do so \u2014 right up until Turn 1. After a better launch off the line, he was in a strong position to challenge his team-mate for position. But the Turn 1 incident took both McLaren drivers out of the race, depriving us of the battle between them.<\/p>\n

More from the US Grand Prix weekend<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0US Grand Prix: Verstappen wins Sprint as pile-up claims both McLarens<\/a><\/p>\n

Even though Max Verstappen\u2019s Sprint win helped him close the gap and increase the pressure on McLaren\u2019s drivers, the real prize remains Sunday\u2019s race. If this season has taught us anything, it\u2019s that if you want to be competitive on Sunday, you have to secure a strong grid position in qualifying.<\/p>\n

But for the second time this weekend, Max Verstappen delivered, and McLaren didn\u2019t. Norris qualified P2, while the championship leader ended up only sixth.<\/p>\n

Looking at his fastest lap data, we can clearly see where Piastri lost most of his time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The entry and exit through Turn 1 \u2014 one of the most important corners on the track \u2014 was almost identical for both Piastri and Norris. Up to Turn 4, the delta between them was practically zero.<\/p>\n

Then came the Australian\u2019s first major mistake. As the graph above shows, he was noticeably slower through Turns 6 and 7, losing around one tenth of a second. Interestingly, the same pattern appeared when comparing their Sprint Qualifying laps.<\/p>\n

For some reason, Oscar didn\u2019t seem to fully trust the car through these faster sections \u2014 and Turn 6 at COTA is exactly the kind of corner where a lack of confidence shows immediately.<\/p>\n

The next key moment was Turn 11, where he again lost time. This loss then carried down the long straight towards Turn 12, costing him roughly another tenth.<\/p>\n

At the start of the final sector, Piastri\u2019s pace improved and the gap between the two drivers briefly narrowed. But Lando\u2019s stronger run through Turn 15 gave him the momentum through the following three connected corners, increasing his advantage once again.<\/p>\n

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In the end, the gap between the two McLaren<\/a> drivers was 0.283 seconds \u2014 a sizable difference given the standards they\u2019ve set this season.<\/p>\n

After qualifying, Piastri admitted that the car had been unpredictable all weekend, making it difficult for him to find the limit. The data backs this up: although slower, Oscar managed to extract almost the best lap he could have at that moment.<\/p>\n

In other words, this time it wasn\u2019t on-track mistakes that caused the poorer result \u2014 it was the lack of connection with the car, most likely due to sub-optimal setup choices for COTA.<\/p>\n

What works in Piastri\u2019s favour is that the Austin circuit offers several good overtaking opportunities, and with strong race pace, positions can be recovered more easily compared to the other circuits. Besides that, with both drivers having retired from the Sprint and with only one practice session, we simply don\u2019t have much reliable data on McLaren\u2019s long-run pace.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s fair to expect that they\u2019ll be among the quickest teams on track alongside Red Bull. How far Oscar can climb remains to be seen. The forecast for higher race-day temperatures theoretically favours McLaren, given how much of their dominance earlier in the year came from exceptional tyre management.<\/p>\n

Another interesting element is Pirelli\u2019s tyre selection: as in Belgium, they\u2019ve created a \u201cgap\u201d in the compounds. Teams will have the hardest C1, then jump to C3 and C4, skipping the middle option. It remains to be seen whether this will lead to more varied strategy options \u2014 or whether we\u2019ll end up with another one-stop race.<\/p>\n

Read next:\u00a0Liam Lawson dismisses \u2018angry\u2019 Yuki Tsunoda after qualifying complaint<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri has suffered another disappointing qualifying session \u2014 his second in the last three race weekends \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,136323,813,816,818,1737,913,2333,85,66002],"class_list":["post-224870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-f1-data","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-sports","tag-united-states-grand-prix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224870","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=224870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}