After his McLaren teammate suffered a DNF at the Dutch Grand Prix, Oscar Piastri has been warned not to get a “bit lazy” in his defense of the F1 championship lead, despite his 34-point lead over Lando Norris.
Those are the words of F1 pundit Jacques Villeneuve, who points out that how Piastri handles these coming nine grands prix will go on to define his place in the Formula 1 history books.
Oscar Piastri warned against getting “lazy” in championship fight
Heading into the 2025 Dutch Grand Prix, Oscar Piastri’s lead over McLaren teammate Lando Norris amounted to just nine points in the drivers’ standings. Yet after Norris’ McLaren suffered a failure and retired from the race in its closing stages, that gap has grown to 34 points — the largest gap between first and second in the title standings all year long.
Piastri gained the lead of the championship in the fifth race of the F1 2025 season, with Norris having gained a strong start thanks to victory at the Australian Grand Prix. The Australian battled hard to turn the tides, and his teammate has been playing catch-up ever since.
But after winning three of the four races before August’s mandatory summer shutdown period, Norris appeared to have momentum in his favor. That looked all the clearer during practice for the Dutch Grand Prix, where Norris was quicker in each session.
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Instead, Norris failed to score a single point in the Dutch Grand Prix after a mechanical failure smoked him out of his cockpit in the closing stages of the race.
The 2025 championship is now Piastri’s to lose, as it will take a mighty and remarkably consistent run of form for Norris to overtake his teammate in the championship standings.
But will this large gap go to Piastri’s head? Speaking on the Sky Sports F1 post-race show, former F1 champion turned pundit Jacques Villeneuve pointed out that Piastri cannot afford to get “lazy” with his championship defense amidst his major lead.
“It changes the mindset, because now he has a cushion, so he’s got control over the championship,” Villeneuve explained.
“It’s his championship to lose. That’s very different.
“You second guess yourself. You drive a little bit more on the defensive, which pushes you into making a you into making a mistake — or do you become a little bit lazy?
“We’ve seen drivers in that position, [who] lose so many points because they change their way of driving, because they have that little cushion, and that creates extra stress.
“So we just don’t know how he’s made yet, you know? And that will be interesting to see how he evolves.”
Villeneuve is correct in pointing out that we’ve never seen Piastri in this exact situation before, so it’s difficult to understand exactly how he’ll perform when the pressure is on.
Thus far, all signs seem to point to Piastri holding strong at the top of the standings, with fellow Sky Sports pundit Martin Brundle noting that, in contrast to his teammate, Piastri is “rock solid in his delivery,” able to keep a “calm head when the pressure is really on.”
It would be uncharacteristic, then, for Piastri to succumb to the pressure of the title fight once he had a firm grasp on the lead — but as Villeneuve points out, even some of the greatest drivers have lost a strong points lead once the pressure mounts.