Norris sits just one point ahead of Piastri, with Verstappen trailing the Australian by 35 points but quickly building momentum with four races left in the season.<\/p>\n
Steiner said ahead of the United States Grand Prix that with Verstappen \u201cgetting stronger\u201d McLaren would \u201chave to make a decision to support the driver which is in front, which is obviously Oscar\u201d.<\/p>\n
That, however, is no longer the case and speaking on The Red Flags Podcast<\/a>, Steiner now said that he believes Verstappen is the \u201cfavourite\u201d to storm home and beat both McLaren drivers.<\/p>\n \u201cHis best ally to win the championship is McLaren,\u201d Steiner said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe \u2018papaya rules\u2019 are for Max… if they keep fighting, they keep taking each other\u2019s points.\u201d<\/p>\n While Steiner has been one of Piastri\u2019s biggest supporters, the former Haas F1 team principal admitted the Australian\u2019s most recent performance across the weekend in Mexico<\/a> was \u201cnot good enough to be a world champion\u201d.<\/p>\n And again, Steiner said that while he doesn\u2019t have the answers for while Piastri is suddenly \u201cstruggling\u201d, he believes the questions surrounding their intra-team fight could be a factor.<\/p>\n ‘Obvious’ Oscar admits to driving change | 02:42<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what exactly is happening but one of things I can conclude out of it is (if) Oscar doesn\u2019t get support of his team to win the championship, you lose a bit of your mojo, you have doubts and you don\u2019t perform,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cAt the beginning of the season Oscar had no pressure because he was number two in the team, unofficially obviously, Lando was there longer, he\u2019s a lot older, he has a lot more experience.<\/p>\n \u201cOscar comes up, wins races, puts himself in the position. I mean, everything goes right.<\/p>\n \u201cBut then I think with all the papaya rules… \u2018let him pass, let him go, you go, I go, let Max go\u2019, all that stuff… I think he lost a bit of confidence in races.\u201d<\/p>\n For what it\u2019s worth, Piastri revealed after the Mexico Grand Prix that there are some \u201cpretty major\u201d changes he needs to make<\/a> to the way he is driving, while foxsports.com.au broke down the five biggest McLaren conspiracy theories<\/a> in a bid to make sense of it all. <\/p>\n Piastri\u2019s next chance to regain his championship lead comes at the Brazilian Grand Prix, with the race scheduled for 4am on Monday, the 10th of November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guenther Steiner warned earlier in the month that Oscar Piastri\u2019s hopes of winning the drivers\u2019 title could be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-252091","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\/252091","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=252091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761200708_112_poster-fallback.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n