Oscar Piastri says he\u2019s got a better idea of where things have gone wrong for him in recent races, as he has a clear target for the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n
The Australian\u2019s title chances have stumbled across the last handful of Grands Prix, but Piastri is keeping things simple for the last three weekends of the year.<\/p>\n
Oscar Piastri: I had to do some headscratching<\/p>\n
Having looked a comfortable favourite to secure his maiden title at the end of the European leg of the season after opening up a 30+ point lead over McLaren teammate Lando Norris, the last few races have proven hugely damaging to Piastri\u2019s championship bid.<\/p>\n
A nightmare weekend in which he crashed out on the first lap of the race has been followed by a string of mid-top-10 results; these have coincided with four consecutive races in which Norris has finished on the podium, including two consecutive Grands Prix wins.<\/p>\n
It means that, with three weekends to go, Piastri is attempting to win the title from a 24-point deficit, against a teammate on a rich vein of form, all while having to worry about the pace of a much more competitive Max Verstappen in his Red Bull, as well as the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers as McLaren\u2019s<\/a> dominance isn\u2019t quite as clearcut as earlier in the year.<\/p>\n But one crumb of comfort Piastri is taking is that the reasons for his faltering results are explainable, such as being given a penalty for his overtaking move on Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc in Brazil that took away a likely P2 finish.<\/p>\n The pace, Piastri insists, is back, having been bizarrely subdued across the United States and Mexican rounds.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, largely, I think Austin and Mexico were quite different to the other races that have not gone so successfully,\u201d Piastri told the media in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n \u201cI think, there, there was a clear pace deficit and something pretty fundamental that just wasn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the other races have just been a combination of different things going wrong. Obviously, Baku was what it was.<\/p>\n \u201cSingapore, from a performance standpoint, actually, was pretty solid. Just the race obviously didn\u2019t pan out exactly how I wanted.<\/p>\n \u201cEven in Brazil, the pace was good at points. I think the Sprint crash didn\u2019t have a great impact on the rest of the weekend either.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were some things resulting from that that were suboptimal for the rest of the weekend. So I think, from a pace and performance point of view, I think Brazil was actually quite good.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just that there were a lot of things that happened that meant the results weren\u2019t on the table. So, for me, yes, there\u2019s been a string of races that have not gone very well, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve been along the same lines.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Austin and Mexico were, but the other races\u2026 the performance has been there, but there\u2019s been something going wrong, whether it be a mistake or a crash or something else going wrong, a penalty.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been things that have harmed the results. So I don\u2019t really look at it as a kind of it\u2019s all been going wrong for the same reason.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were a couple of races where, yes, I needed to do some head scratching and work out what was going on.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the other races that have been tough have just been what some might say is the difficult world of motorsport.\u201d<\/p>\n Lando Norris vs Oscar Piastri: McLaren head-to-head scores for F1 2025<\/p>\n \ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n