AUSTIN, Texas — The story of Oscar Piastri’s bid for a maiden Formula One world championship in 2025 had long been one of consistent, quality performances.
Whenever his McLaren teammate Lando Norris stumbled, Piastri usually kept it clean and tidy. A five-race stretch of either finishing first and second between Austria and Zandvoort put him into a 34-point lead; a margin that, if his form sustained, looked hard to overcome.
But four races later, Piastri’s lead has narrowed significantly. He was behind Norris in Monza and Singapore, around Piastri’s crash-filled weekend in Baku, with the latest misstep coming at the United States Grand Prix — arguably his weakest race weekend performance of the season, given he’d at least shown flashes of pace in Azerbaijan.
He’s now just 14 points clear of Norris and only 40 ahead of Verstappen, who was 104 back after Zandvoort. Five races and two sprint race weekends remain.
“I still fully believe that I can win the championship,” Piastri said after finishing fifth in Austin, adding, “The faster you go, the more points you’re going to score. That’s what I’ll focus on.”
Piastri failed to finish Saturday’s sprint last weekend after the first-corner clash with Nico Hülkenberg and Norris when attempting a cutback move on his teammate and with the Sauber pinched on the inside. He could then only qualify sixth for the main race.
Unlike Norris, who fought successfully for second against Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc throughout the main Austin race the next day, Piastri never seemed to have the pace to compete. Those mistakes cost him in Baku, leading to the early crash, and the first-lap touch with Norris in Singapore left him chasing.
But this weekend didn’t have an obvious explanation. An anomalous performance in what has largely been an impeccable season.
“This weekend has been quite different to the previous couple,” Piastri told reporters after the race. “Baku was obviously a bit of a disaster for very different reasons, and Singapore was what it was. This weekend has been the odd one out compared to the others.”
The hallmark of Piastri’s race weekends in 2025 has been his ability to build his pace up gradually before peaking at the very end of qualifying. He’d normally start practice a few steps behind Norris, then close up, and then move ahead right when it mattered.
“This is what has been missing so far,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said after qualifying on Saturday, where nearly three-tenths of a second separated the papaya cars, a rare notable margin.
The paddock expectation was for Austin to be a better event for McLaren than the previous three in Singapore, Azerbaijan and Italy. The track layout had a few more medium speed corners that would suit the MCL39 car’s strengths, though Piastri felt there was “more outside that range.”
Norris certainly looked stronger. Stella said after the race the performance was within the car to beat Verstappen and Red Bull, had it not been for Norris losing the first stint stuck behind Leclerc’s Ferrari. But it simply never clicked for Piastri.
The sprint weekend format hardly helped matters, taking time away for Piastri to build his confidence on a low-grip track with only a single practice session. That hasn’t stopped him at the previous sprints this year, though, as he won the Sunday grands prix in China, Miami and Belgium.
The Austin sprint crash also proved costly given the shorter race often gives the teams a chance to understand where their cars are at around the reduced practice running and they can make any setup changes required afterwards. McLaren also had to spend a large amount of that fine-tuning time rebuilding its cars last Saturday.
The qualifying margin between Norris and Piastri is normally measured in hundredths of a second, not tenths. That changed last weekend. The sprint qualifying gap was 0.309-seconds and 0.283-seconds in full qualifying, with Norris ahead each time. Since Austria in June, the margin hasn’t been any more than 0.113s-seconds.
“He seemed to have a couple of tenths that he was not able to fully realise, and that possibly was available in the car,” Stella told reporters on Sunday, revealing that McLaren was checking over the car following the race to ensure that “everything is as intended,” a sign of how odd the disparity seemed.
Oscar Piastri finished Sunday’s U.S. GP in fifth place, with his title rivals Max Verstappen and Lando Norris first and second (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
Stella also noted how small gains on setup, such as with a car’s ride height on the very bumpy track in Austin, could have a big impact.
So why couldn’t Piastri find his usual rhythm and unlock those final couple of tenths? “I don’t have any great ideas at the moment,” Piastri said. “Qualifying was clean from my side, just the pace wasn’t there. Honestly, (it was) a pretty similar story in the race.”
Piastri also claimed that COTA was not among his favorite F1 tracks. “It’s not been a particularly happy hunting ground my whole F1 career,” he said, a feeling backed up by the results, as he retired here in 2023 and finished fifth last year, three places behind Norris just as he did on Sunday.
“In some ways, I can’t say I’m shocked that this has been a tough weekend. But obviously not what I’ve been hoping for.”
Stella viewed that tough weekend as a learning moment for Piastri – still only in his third F1 season – saying McLaren would work with him to find where he could have taken a step on the driving side.
“When the conditions are such that we have low grip, you really need to challenge the car, lean on the understeer, oversteer, locking,” Stella said. “This is an area of his driving that has an opportunity to improve, and in Oscar’s standards, that he will improve pretty fast.
“(On Sunday) we got quite a lot of information that adds to the information we got (in the sprint). Already (pre-race), we had some conversations with Oscar as to what we can do to extract more. This is just data to learn, and Oscar will learn pretty soon.”
If Piastri has shown anything in his evolution from Norris’s belated title wingman in 2024’s final races to world championship leader since April in 2025, it’s his ability to learn and develop quickly. As tough as the Austin weekend will be to digest, he won’t just brush it off and move on. He’ll try to use it to make him a better driver.
But that bounce back needs to happen fast. Piastri’s championship lead has shrunk for four races in a row. All the momentum right now is with Verstappen, even if he said Red Bull needs to be “perfect ‘til the end to have a chance” of the title. Norris will also have felt the tide turning his way.
That all leaves Piastri needing to rediscover his groove, with his first chance coming quickly in this weekend’s Mexico City GP.
“If we can find our way again, find our pace, and certainly for me find the pace again, then I don’t have any major concerns,” Piastri said. “There’s still a long way to go in the championship. It is still, for Max anyway. He’s obviously chased it down pretty quick, but it’s not exactly a small gap with five rounds to go.
“I think if we can find our pace again, then I think it’ll take care of itself.”
Stella has experienced his share of tense last-race title deciders in the past, working as an engineer at Ferrari in 2007 when the team won with Kimi Räikkonen, and in 2010 when it suffered a bitter defeat at the last race with Fernando Alonso. In the former, McLaren seemed to have a clear edge with its then driver line-up (Lewis Hamilton and Alonso), before Räikkonen hunted them down at the very end – a clear parallel to Verstappen’s current efforts.
To Stella, momentum means nothing. As one would expect from an engineer, he said post-race in Austin that he’d be more interested in the mathematics going into the final race in Abu Dhabi over anything else.
By that metric, what must be kept front of mind is the fact that Piastri, just as he’s done since round five in Saudi Arabia, is leading the world championship. A 14-point buffer to the chasing pack is still a position of strength, despite the rise of Red Bull and the lack of car upgrades coming from McLaren for the remainder of the year.
“I’d still rather be where I am than the other two,” Piastri said.