{"id":233790,"date":"2025-10-23T00:59:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T00:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/233790\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T00:59:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T00:59:11","slug":"mclaren-oscar-piastri-drivers-championship-battle-lando-norris-max-verstappen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/233790\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren, Oscar Piastri, drivers’ championship battle, Lando Norris, Max Verstappen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar Piastri<\/a> is keeping his cool despite the title threat from rivals Lando Norris<\/a> and Max Verstappen<\/a>, tapping into his successful history in nail-biting junior championship fights.<\/p>\n

Piastri endured a difficult weekend at the United States Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

An opening-lap crash in the sprint race<\/a>, a disappointing qualifying session and a fifth-place finish in the grand prix<\/a> yielded the Australian just 10 championship points.<\/p>\n

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Conversely, Red Bull’s Verstappen took maximum points in both races, capitalising on Piastri’s struggles.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri looks on in the media pen during the United States Grand Prix weekend.\u00a0Kym Illman via Getty Images<\/p>\n

After 19 rounds, Piastri tops the drivers’ standings and is on course for his first world title, with a 14-point advantage over papaya teammate Norris.<\/p>\n

But after a car-performance mismatch in Monza and incident-riddled weekends for Piastri in Baku<\/a> and Austin<\/a>, Verstappen has roared back into contention with three consecutive victories, significantly closing the gap to the two McLaren<\/a> drivers.<\/p>\n

With five grand prix remaining, Verstappen is third in the standings, trailing Norris by 26 points and Piastri by 40.<\/p>\n

Piastri’s recent downturn is sharply reflected in his results at the last four grand prix.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old has managed to score just 37 points, while Norris has earned 57, and Verstappen 101.<\/p>\n

Despite his recent dip in form, Piastri remains optimistic, drawing on his past success in close-fought championship battles across the junior racing categories.<\/p>\n

\"Australia's<\/p>\n

Australia’s Oscar Piastri climbs out of his McLaren after crashing at the start of the US Grand Prix sprint race.\u00a0Meg Oliphant via Getty Images<\/p>\n

No stranger to title pressure, Piastri famously went on a remarkable run of three consecutive junior titles on his ascent to Formula 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With titles in Formula Renault Eurocup (2019), Formula 3 (2020), and Formula 2 (2021), Piastri is the only driver in history to conquer those three key single-seater categories in successive seasons.<\/p>\n

Crucially, many of those titles came down to the wire.<\/p>\n

Piastri edged out Victor Martins for the 2019 Formula Renault Eurocup crown by a narrow 7.5 points, and then clinched the 2020 Formula 3 championship by just three points over Th\u00e9o Pourchaire in a dramatic season finale.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been in fights that were as close, or at this point, even closer than what they are now,” Piastri told media in Austin.<\/p>\n

“So I’ve got the evidence for myself that things can still turn out well, and I still fully believe that I can win the championship.<\/p>\n

“This weekend has obviously been tough, and the gap has come down a little bit in the last few weekends.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri speaks in the media pen during the F1 Grand Prix of United States.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

“But again, performance is what’s going to win you a championship, not just looking at points and seeing if you can increase or decrease it.<\/p>\n

“The faster you go, the more points you’re going to score.”<\/p>\n

Despite his recent setbacks, Piastri is confident that his car’s race pace remains strong. However, he admits that achieving top results in qualifying has become noticeably “tougher” in the last few rounds.<\/p>\n

“I think just trying to understand if we’ve been maximising the car every weekend,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I think in race trim, we’ve still looked pretty good, but in qualifying trim, it’s been a little bit tougher for us the last few weekends, and this weekend, for whatever reason, you know, I’ve just not gelled with the car at all.<\/p>\n

“So that’s the biggest thing, and just the only thing you can do is analyse it and see what we can do better.”<\/p>\n

The title fight continues at the Mexican Grand Prix on October 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri is keeping his cool despite the title threat from rivals Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, tapping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-233790","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\/233790","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=233790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}