For much of last year, it looked as though Oscar Piastri was on course for a comfortable title win. However, a dip in form towards the end of the season meant that the McLaren star not only had to concede defeat to his team-mate Lando Norris in the world championship battle, but he even slipped to third place behind Red Bull Racing star Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n
During this period, Piastri had to put up with a lot of criticism and some well-meaning advice. This included comments from G\u00fcnther Steiner, who, on the \u2018Red Flags\u2019 podcast, suggested to the Melbourne-born driver that a team change might be a possible solution to his slump in form. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe simply needs to regroup over the winter and then come back stronger. And if he can\u2019t manage that, then perhaps it would be best for him to switch teams. But he could come back stronger, because I consider him a strong driver,\u201d emphasised the South Tyrolean, who has since changed his mind.<\/p>\n
Although Piastri has not regained his former form this year and has yet to secure a race win, Steiner recently said in an interview with \u2018Speedcafe.com\u2019: \u201cAt the moment, I think it\u2019s better if he stays, because otherwise he\u2019d basically be backing down in front of McLaren. In my opinion, he doesn\u2019t need to do that. He\u2019s good enough to stay there. He needs to get back to where he was last year. And then we\u2019ll see how things go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steiner does not want to read too much into the fact that Piastri has scored significantly fewer points than the champion from within their own ranks: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t worry too much about that. He\u2019s still achieving good results. It\u2019s not a complete defeat. And he\u2019s up against Lando, who is one of the best on the track at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreover, there aren\u2019t many alternatives available. \u201cThere aren\u2019t many vacant seats at the big four teams, so I\u2019d say that staying at McLaren is the best thing for him at the moment,\u201d concludes Steiner. And he emphasises: \u201cWe all have good years and bad years. And he isn\u2019t having a bad year; it\u2019s more of an average one. He\u2019s still young, so it\u2019s important now that he doesn\u2019t panic. Because there\u2019s no reason to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For much of last year, it looked as though Oscar Piastri was on course for a comfortable title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-945282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945282","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=945282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}