{"id":291481,"date":"2025-11-18T00:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T00:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/291481\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T00:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T00:51:11","slug":"oscar-piastri-alan-jones-mclaren-comments-las-vegas-race-teammate-battles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/291481\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri Alan Jones McLaren comments Las vegas race teammate battles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia’s last Formula 1<\/a> world champion Alan Jones<\/a> has rubbished the notion of preferential treatment at McLaren<\/a> against their driver, Oscar Piastri<\/a>, arguing that the idea crops up every season with any title challengers in the same team.<\/p>\n

Currently, McLaren have both their drivers fighting for the championship while Red Bull<\/a>‘s Max Verstappen<\/a> is close behind.<\/p>\n

Many have argued that Piastri’s sudden decline in performance is due to team sabotage, but Jones called the idea the “greatest load of nonsense.”<\/p>\n

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“It’s the greatest load of nonsense of all time,” said Jones on the ABC Summer Grandstand podcast.<\/p>\n

“Every single season, we come across this bullshit.<\/p>\n

“It’s either Mark Webber against Vettel, or it’s somebody, it’s always, ‘Oh, he’s got a better car than me’ or ‘He’s getting preferential treatment’.<\/p>\n

“It’s absolute crap.”<\/p>\n

A long history of teammate fights<\/p>\n

During his time as an F1 driver, Jones was regularly locked in tense fights with his teammate Carlos Reutemann.<\/p>\n

But Jones argued that teams would be silly to fly “halfway around the world” to be preferential to one driver and lose out on the maximum points they could achieve.<\/p>\n

\"Carlos<\/p>\n

Carlos Reutemann and Alan Jones fought tense battles during their time as teammates. \u00a0LAT Images<\/p>\n

“These teams don’t spend absolute fortunes travelling halfway around the world to stymie one car or give preference to the other,” he added.<\/p>\n

“I can assure you that both these cars are getting the same sort of treatment.<\/p>\n

“I know Zak Brown very well. He’s a good racer, and he’d be giving both these blokes equal chances.<\/p>\n

“I had Carlos Reutemann, an Argentinian, as my teammate<\/a>, and the crap that used to come through that Williams was giving me better equipment, a better car, that they weren’t looking after Carlos the way they should.<\/p>\n

“Of course, Argentinians being a little bit fiery as they are, that was sort of exaggerated even more.<\/p>\n

“People get carried away, and half of those who get carried away have no idea about the sport whatsoever.”<\/p>\n

He reiterated the outlandish ideas of teams handing drivers damaged cars or changing the setup to help a particular driver. <\/p>\n

\"Lando<\/p>\n

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri helped their team McLaren win the constructors’ championship.\u00a0LAT Images<\/p>\n

“If it were tennis, I swear to god, they’d be saying they’re giving the bloke the wrong racket or something. It’s just rubbish,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Then you get all the rare experts coming out of the woodwork. With their opinions on this, that and the other thing. Half of them wouldn’t know one end of a car from another.<\/p>\n

“But they’re free to give their advice whether it’s needed or not. It’s just nonsense.<\/p>\n

“It’s not [happening], certainly within the team, I can assure you.”<\/p>\n

Claire Williams, the daughter of Frank Williams, team principal to Jones at Williams Racing, agreed with the sentiment that there is no ill will inside the McLaren garage.<\/p>\n

She reminded those that disagree that racing is a “crazy business” and that decisions by race engineers on the pit wall are made in a split-second to best suit every driver on track.<\/p>\n

“You’re going to have best-laid plans going into every grand prix. You’re going to have the conversations with your drivers to keep it clean, keep it on the race track,” Williams explained.<\/p>\n

“But, you know, racing is a bit of a crazy business. You don’t know what’s going to happen when the lights go out.<\/p>\n

“It’s not easy to manage and we can all look on a Monday and go ‘why did they make that decision, why did they do that?’<\/p>\n

“But all I can say is McLaren on the pit wall will always have the best intentions and try to do the best thing for their drivers on a Sunday afternoon.”<\/p>\n

Las Vegas looming<\/p>\n

Coming into Las Vegas, Piastri is trailing behind his teammate in the standings by 24 points.<\/p>\n

Lando Norris<\/a> could effectively clinch the drivers’ title by placing at least second in the next three weekends, but Jones thinks that the pendulum could swing either way.<\/p>\n

“Norris could have a DNF, Oscar win and end up back in the lead again,” Jones insisted.<\/p>\n

But not all in the paddock agree.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Guenther Steiner has entered the discussion of Oscar Piastri’s future multiple times. \u00a0LAT Images<\/p>\n

Guenther Steiner, former F1 boss at Haas believes that Verstappen is set to leapfrog a “mentally destroyed” Piastri in the drivers’ championship. Currently only 25 points separate the two. <\/p>\n

“You guys saw what happened in Brazil, or not in Brazil, the last four races. So, why not?” Steiner asked on the Red Flags podcast.<\/p>\n

“I mean, he [Verstappen] continues to do it.<\/p>\n

“If you say that Oscar is now destroyed mentally, I mean, Max will be ahead of him, absolutely. And Max is motivated like hell.<\/p>\n

“As we can see in Brazil, he didn’t give up after a crappy qualifying. He rolled his sleeves up and made it better, and finished on the podium.”<\/p>\n

Steiner brought up the discussion of Piastri’s future, saying his opinions have changed<\/a> and that the young Australian would benefit from leaving McLaren if he doesn’t win the championship.<\/p>\n

\"Zak<\/p>\n

Zak Brown and his two drivers have always argued there is no diver bias in the garage. \u00a0Formula 1 via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“I think if that is happening, he just needs to regroup over the winter and come back stronger than before,” Steiner said.<\/p>\n

“Otherwise, if he doesn’t come back stronger, I think the best is that he changes teams then. That’s my opinion about it.”<\/p>\n

The Las Vegas race on Sunday will be at 3pm, November 23 (AEDT).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s last Formula 1 world champion Alan Jones has rubbished the notion of preferential treatment at McLaren against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-291481","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-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291481","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=291481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}