Oscar Piastri news<\/a><\/p>\nIt is nothing short of catastrophic \u2013 not to mention highly embarrassing \u2013 when any team, let alone one of McLaren\u2019s stature, sees both cars thrown out of a race.<\/p>\n
And as a result, the pressure and scrutiny on the team heading to Qatar is far higher than it should be.<\/p>\n
In Stella, though, McLaren has one of the calmest and studious minds in the pit lane to guide the team through it.<\/p>\n
His steady hand will never be more important than over the next few days.<\/p>\n
This will only become a season-defining blow if McLaren allows it to be.<\/p>\n
Reader reaction: Can McLaren see of the threat of Max Verstappen?<\/p>\n
VictorBravo: The failure of McLaren to identify a No1 driver was identified as a risk early this season. Now we see the results.<\/p>\n
Corstiaan: Max only realistic hope is that Oscar drastically improves on his current form and BELIEVES he still has a chance to become WDC and understands that Norris needs to be defeated one way or the other. But i don\u2019t have high hopes for that to happen.<\/p>\n
DerJoul: I am curious if the chosen one at McLaren will keep his head straight at the next race, something in me is saying, that Lando will break and need a new pair of underwear<\/p>\n
Fire Storm: While the DSQ of McLaren was a massive blow, it wasn\u2019t the end of the world, at least not for Norris.<\/p>\n
Despite him coming out with zero points from Vegas, Norris has lost just 2 points to Verstappen in the last 3 GPs.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Piastri\u2019s challenge has collapsed. 24 points with 2 races to go (and a sprint) is still good. All he has to do is stay out of trouble in the remaining races.<\/p>\n
Jojo (in reply to Fire Storm): Without the DSQ, Norris would have had one hand on the trophy, with a 30 point lead over his team mate, he would likely have wrapped up the championship in Qatar, as long as he didn\u2019t drop more than 5 points to Piastri or 17 to Verstappen.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s still the most likely to win the championship, but now it just takes a DNF or a big mistake and it could prove costly. As you say, he just needs to stay out of trouble but I\u2019m sure he will be more nervous about it.<\/p>\n
Steven West: McLaren can\u2019t throw their weight behind Norris, unless they want to go back on Brown\u2019s public commitment to let them race.<\/p>\n
So, as I see it, Norris has to contend with Max on his own and may have to contend with Piastri if he finds his mojo again.<\/p>\n
Bleak as it looks for Piastri, he\u2019s still got a chance and they committed publicly to honor that.<\/p>\n
So, what if Piastri sticks it on pole for Qatar? \u201cOscar, let Lando through, please\u201d\u2026 um, nope\u2026 And why should he?<\/p>\n
Sure the title fight still favors Norris, but McLaren have planted a bunch of landmines that could go off in the next two race weekends\u2026<\/p>\n
Your comment is under moderation M: Two things from me.<\/p>\n
Firstly, since the Red Bull seats will be a hot topic in the coming week(s) how about a shout out to Ayumu Iwasa for winning the Super Formula championship this weekend.<\/p>\n
Secondly, if the title is decided in Abu Dhabi, 2025 will be remembered as one of the great seasons.<\/p>\n
That said, I\u2019ve reflected on the state of modern F1 and although I don\u2019t like it\u2019s continuation towards \u201csporting entertainment\u201d, I think 2024 was one of the best years this sport has ever seen.<\/p>\n
There was endless change off track, but most importantly there were so many brilliant races, several of which went down to the wire. Canada, Austria, Britain, Baku, Mexico, COTA, Belgium\u2026 just exhilarating grands prix.<\/p>\n
Even if 2025 has a massive sting in the tail, most of the races have been fairly dull.<\/p>\n
I think people just remember the title battle but to me 2024 was a classic. Even the F2 season was classic, even if the title race petered off towards the end.<\/p>\n
Iggy970: If there ever was time for McLaren to introduce \u201c1st driver-2nd driver\u201d setup it would be now!<\/p>\n
This DSQ is major blow for Norris, Piastri title ambitions with Max getting so close and if nothing is done the situation from 1986 championship will repeat.<\/p>\n
Just as a reminder, Prost won the championship in a inferior McLaren car, while Mansell and Piquet were fighting against each other in much better Williams car.<\/p>\n
Time for Stella to go to Piastri and tell him \u201cyou had your chance, you blow it, we have been fair to you so far but now after the Las Vegas blow the team wants the drivers title, so you need to do everything in your power to support Lando\u201d<\/p>\n
Arthur: Looks like McLaren pushed the envelope and fell foul got punished. Next!<\/p>\n
Eleanor Rigby: Blando will probably win the championship \u2013 Max would need to win both races and the Sprint, and Lando could come 2nd in all of them and still win.<\/p>\n
The only hope Max has is a Lando DNF, or perhaps McLaren\u2019s performance falls massively off with this new plank-wear clampdown.<\/p>\n
Still \u2013 I dont think his stock will actually rise that much if he does \u2013 in fact the dialog will probably be about how much heavy weather he made of the WDC in a dominant car.<\/p>\n
Max, on the other hand, will probably lose the WDC \u2013 but his stock\u2019s risen even further after this season.<\/p>\n
Read next:\u00a0Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari are at breaking point<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the face of it, McLaren\u2019s double disqualification from the Las Vegas Grand Prix had the potential to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,3874,818,1737,913,2333,17165,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-312620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1-features","11":"tag-home-page","12":"tag-lando-norris","13":"tag-mclaren","14":"tag-oscar-piastri","15":"tag-popular","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312620","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=312620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}