{"id":260396,"date":"2025-11-03T20:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T20:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/260396\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T20:15:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T20:15:10","slug":"oscar-piastri-theories-rubbished-as-brundle-addresses-struggling-mclaren-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/260396\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri theories rubbished as Brundle addresses ‘struggling’ McLaren driver"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martin Brundle has rubbished conspiracy theories that Oscar Piastri is somehow being treated unfairly at McLaren, but believes the Australian \u201cneeds a solid weekend\u201d after a difficult run of form.<\/p>\n

Piastri has seen a 34-point lead to Lando Norris overturned since the Dutch Grand Prix, but he still sits just one point behind his McLaren teammate with four rounds to go.<\/p>\n

Brundle: Oscar Piastri has gone from \u2018horizontal\u2019 to \u2018struggling\u2019<\/p>\n

Brundle thinks the events of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in particular would have \u201cscattered his brain\u201d when discussing Piastri\u2019s form, having been twice in the barriers and jumpstarted the race, as a first sign of pressure mounting on the young McLaren driver.<\/p>\n

With Norris having clawed back his deficit from a retirement at Zandvoort in August, the McLaren duo head into the season run-in almost neck and neck in the standings, with Max Verstappen getting ever closer in his Red Bull.<\/p>\n

While Norris has spoken of the work going on behind the scenes on his side of the garage to make the car work to his liking, Piastri said after the Mexico City Grand Prix<\/a> that he has been having to \u201cdrive very differently the last couple of weekends\u201d to try and extract the most from his car.<\/p>\n

Formerly a McLaren driver himself, Brundle explained how there is no way that the team will be seeking to favour one driver over the other, the main outcome being that the team will want either of its drivers to win the World Championship come Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged Piastri\u2019s recent struggles, however, but the shifts in a title fight are such that he brought up an old adage from a former employer, that pressure goes one of two ways in high-level sport.<\/p>\n

More on the F1 2025 season as title battle heats up<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0Debunking McLaren sabotage conspiracy as momentum swings to Norris<\/a><\/p>\n

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

\u201cI\u2019m sure McLaren are checking that chassis, the aerodynamics, the fit, the setup of that car, ad infinitum,\u201d Brundle told Sky\u2019s The F1 Show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really honestly believe McLaren don\u2019t mind which of their two drivers wins the World Championship, as long as it\u2019s one of them, and it\u2019s not Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s super important to them, and something\u2019s happened in Oscar\u2019s head. Have we seen any signs of this before in his previous junior racing or Formula 1 seasons? That\u2019s worth looking into, but something\u2019s just gone wrong, and he\u2019s lost a bit of confidence, and the way these cars go into corners and how close the competition is at the moment, you only need to be a touch off, and he needs a very solid weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cHas he got a lot going on in his ears? You know, we described him as \u2018horizontal\u2019 for pretty much all the season, because that\u2019s how he looked, and he always has been so calm on the radio, not letting things get to him, and suddenly, that glass ceiling or that facade, whatever it is, seems to have gone from him and and he\u2019s struggling.<\/p>\n

\u201cRest assured, a team doesn\u2019t spend $400 million a year and have one-and-a-half thousand employees and try to make one of their cars go a little bit more slowly.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, everybody associated with Oscar\u2019s car will want him to turn that around soon, as in Brazil. His wins earlier on in the season\u2026 his season early doors was so astonishing. You don\u2019t suddenly forget how to do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cA team boss of mine had an expression at high level motorsport, which I\u2019m sure is the same in any high level sport: You\u2019re either giving pressure or you\u2019re taking pressure, there\u2019s nothing in between.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no comfortable middle ground, and Lando suddenly started giving pressure, and so is Max, and Oscar started taking pressure, and so we\u2019ve had that flip flop, and that, I think, is what we\u2019re seeing at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read next:\u00a0Have your say: Are mandatory two-stop F1 races a good idea?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin Brundle has rubbished conspiracy theories that Oscar Piastri is somehow being treated unfairly at McLaren, but believes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,818,913,44,2333,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-260396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-home-page","14":"tag-mclaren","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-oscar-piastri","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260396","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=260396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}