{"id":296770,"date":"2025-11-20T09:51:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/296770\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T09:51:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:51:13","slug":"shift-in-mclaren-battle-and-oscar-piastris-f1-dip-very-bizarre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/296770\/","title":{"rendered":"Shift in McLaren battle and Oscar Piastri\u2019s F1 dip \u201cvery bizarre\u201d\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen<\/a> admits he needs \u201ca lot of luck\u201d to turn around the 2025 Formula 1 title fight in his favour, while also suggesting that the change in momentum in McLaren<\/a>\u2019s intra-team championship fight is \u201cvery bizarre\u201d. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The Dutchman has more than halved his deficit to the top of the F1 standings since Zandvoort, but believes the \u201creal picture\u201d is not enough to dethrone McLaren – unless chaos or fortune intervenes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think closing the gap that quickly has happened partly because all circumstances came together,\u201d Verstappen said ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. \u201cThey made a few mistakes after the summer break or had a crash, while we had some good races in which everything came together. And yeah, then you can gain very quickly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, the race weekends in Mexico City and Brazil reminded Verstappen that such gains aren\u2019t a given.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point, you come back to reality and know that it won\u2019t go like that everywhere. But at least we\u2019ve been on the podium the last couple of races, and that\u2019s already a lot more consistent than what it was from mid-2024 to mid-2025. So, in the end it’s still positive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The remarkable turnaround in the McLaren intra-team battle\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the period Verstappen refers to, the internal McLaren battle has flipped completely. After Lando Norris<\/a>\u2019 engine failure in Zandvoort, Oscar Piastri<\/a> looked on course for his first ever world title \u2013 yet that picture has changed dramatically in recent weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

“It\u2019s not really my problem\u201d – Max Vestappen wades into the McLaren title fight\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo by: Chris Graythen \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no explanation for that to be honest. I find it very bizarre,\u201d Verstappen said when asked by Motorsport.com. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect it to go like this, although at the end of the day it\u2019s not really my problem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

When noted during the Dutch media session that Piastri didn\u2019t suddenly forget how to drive, Verstappen continued: \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so. But honestly, I also don\u2019t know how this is possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jos Verstappen<\/a> recently said Piastri \u2013 or his manager Mark Webber<\/a> \u2013 should \u201cslam their fist on the table\u201d during this difficult part of the season. It underlines that Verstappen himself wouldn\u2019t have handled such a situation in the same way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, but I think that has to do with how they operate as a team as well. That\u2019s not how I operate. But that\u2019s fine, everyone does their own thing. There\u2019s nothing wrong with that, but I am a bit different in that regard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what has happened or what hasn\u2019t happened, so it\u2019s difficult for me to judge. But I would probably have been a bit more annoyed, I think, when you\u2019re that far ahead and suddenly that far behind.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Piastri, the situation got worse in Brazil when he received an unfortunate penalty.\u00a0Carlos Sainz called that penalty \u201cunacceptable\u201d<\/a>, while\u00a0McLaren felt Antonelli was equally to blame<\/a> for the incident but accepted the decision\u00a0after the race. Verstappen admits Red Bull would have been more vocal, although ultimately the effect is the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Photo by: Andy Hone\/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I don\u2019t know why they handled it like that. In the end, you can be angry about it, but the penalty will still stand anyway. You just have to live with it. If you have a problem with that, then you need to contact the stewards or the FIA and maybe you can talk about it for the future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Verstappen “not going to cry\u201d if he doesn\u2019t win the championship\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Verstappen fails to win a fifth consecutive title himself this year, he says he’ll be able to put it into perspective pretty quickly. It would mark the end of an era of dominance with four consecutive world titles, but the Dutchman doesn’t want to dramatise that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I\u2019ll still go on holiday! I\u2019m pretty good at putting things into perspective and letting things go. I\u2019m not going to cry about it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen admits he needs \u201ca lot of luck\u201d to turn around the 2025 Formula 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,169940,813,816,165239,170119,85],"class_list":["post-296770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-f1-las-vegas-grand-prix","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-las-vegas-gp","tag-max-verstappen-shift-in-mclaren-battle-and-oscar-piastriu2019s-f1-dip-u201cvery-bizarreu201du00a0","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296770","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=296770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}