Former F1 driver Martin Brundle has dismissed suggestions that McLaren has been sabotaging Oscar Piastri’s car at recent races.<\/p>\n
Piastri has endured a challenging run of form across the last five grand prix weekends and has been outpaced by team-mate Lando Norris.<\/p>\n
Its a stark contrast to his form earlier in the season when there was little to seperate the two McLaren drivers as they battled for the title.<\/p>\n
Norris enjoyed a dominant run to victory last time out in Mexico City to take hold of the championship lead, while Piastri crossed the line in fifth.<\/p>\n
It marked the fourth consecutive race Piastri has failed to finish on the podium, leaving Brundle to voice confusion over Piastri’s sudden drop off in form.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething has just gone wrong and he’s lost a bit of confidence,\u201d Brundle told the Sky F1 podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way these cars go into corners and how close the competition is at the moment, you only need to be a touch off. He needs a very solid weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cHas he got a lot going on in his ears? We described him as horizontal for pretty much all the season, because that’s how he looked.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe 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 he’s struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Brundle has played down suggestions Piastri is being unfairly treated by McLaren as the title fight reaches the final stages.<\/p>\n
\u201cRest assured, a team doesn’t spend $400 million a year and have 1,500 employees and try to make one of their cars go a little bit more slowly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody associated with Oscar’s car will want him to turn that around soon, as in Brazil.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis season early doors was so astonishing, you don’t suddenly forget how to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former F1 driver Martin Brundle has dismissed suggestions that McLaren has been sabotaging Oscar Piastri’s car at recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-263936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263936","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=263936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}