Australian Oscar Piastri conceded his dream of winning this year\u2019s drivers\u2019 championship is slipping away after his teammate Lando Norris extended his advantage in their rivalry by finishing second in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Mathematically, Piastri could still win the title by winning both remaining races \u2013 Qatar and ABu Dhabi \u2013 and netting 50 points, but Norris would have to stumble badly in both those races.<\/p>\n
Piastri has not won since the final day of August at the Dutch Grand Prix and has just one podium finish in the seven races since. He seemed to accept that his title chances are slipping away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really know what to think, to be honest. The first lap was eventful, to say the least,\u201d Piastri said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is what it is. I think I\u2019m going to try my best, obviously, for the next two races and try to put myself in the best position possible. There\u2019s still a lot of laps left to go, a lot can still happen, but I need to make sure that I\u2019m in the best position to capitalise if that happens.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s all I can do now, so I\u2019ll set my sights on that and see how we go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Piastri told the post-race broadcast his McLaren was \u201cwuick in clean air\u201d, but said he spent too long stuck behind other drivers, in particular AK Antonelli\u2019s Mercedes.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom start to finish, it felt like there was tough moments in the race,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the more pertinent question for Piastri at this stage of the season is whether he can hold off the fast-finishing Max Verstappen to hold onto his second place in the drivers\u2019 standings. The gap between them is now down to 12 points, and the Dutchman, the reigning four-time champion, is finishing the season strongly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian Oscar Piastri conceded his dream of winning this year\u2019s drivers\u2019 championship is slipping away after his teammate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-303168","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\/303168","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=303168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}