{"id":249085,"date":"2025-10-30T01:33:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T01:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/249085\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T01:33:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T01:33:11","slug":"oscar-piastris-pre-race-preparations-for-the-mexican-gp-might-have-just-saved-his-championship-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/249085\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri\u2019s pre-race preparations for the Mexican GP might have just saved his championship hopes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\/ Follow us on Google Discover <\/a> <\/p>\n

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri fell behind teammate Lando Norris in the championship for the first time since April at the Mexico City Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri<\/a> could only start from seventh at the Mexico City Grand Prix<\/a> and could only watch as Lando Norris<\/a> stormed off into the distance to take the most dominant victory of his Formula 1 career.<\/p>\n

The Australian\u2019s recent results have seen him give up his lead in the drivers\u2019 championship<\/a>, and he now trails Norris by a single point with four races to go.<\/p>\n

Since winning the Dutch Grand Prix, Piastri has failed to finish ahead of Norris or Max Verstappen at any of the next five races.<\/p>\n

Position Drivers’ Championship PointsPts 1 357 2 356 3 321 4 258 5 210 6 146 7 97 8 73 9 41 10 39 <\/p>\n

Team principal Andrea Stella has told Piastri to be proud of his comeback in Mexico<\/a>, but has also admitted that the 24-year-old is beginning to have struggles that Norris isn\u2019t experiencing.<\/p>\n

Piastri is having more difficulty at low-grip circuits<\/a>, and the way in which Norris is setting his car up to counteract this doesn\u2019t appear to be helping his teammate in the same way.<\/p>\n

Journalists Rebecca Clancy and Ben Hunt believe Piastri did something just before Sunday\u2019s race in Mexico that might have kept his championship chances alive.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: McLaren driver Oscar Piastri\u2019s life outside F1 from height to girlfriend<\/a><\/p>\n

\"McLarenPhoto by Jakub Porzycki\/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesOscar Piastri \u2018spent all of Saturday night\u2019 studying McLaren data to keep F1 championship hopes alive <\/p>\n

Speaking on the Inside the Piranha Club Podcast, Clancy said: \u201cHe has finished last of the three contenders in this championship fight for the last five races.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe qualified nearly six-tenths off Norris from pole on Saturday, seven places behind Norris.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe apparently spent all of Saturday night with his engineers digging into the data to see and try what he could come up with.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said after the race yesterday that he cannot understand why, for 19 races, he\u2019s been able to drive that car, but he just cannot work out what\u2019s going wrong now.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe doesn\u2019t seem in a good place, does he?\u201d<\/p>\n

RANKDRIVERTEAMPOINTS1Lando NorrisMcLaren252Charles LeclercFerrari183Max VerstappenRed Bull154Oliver BearmanHaas125Oscar PiastriMcLaren106Kimi AntonelliMercedes87George RussellMercedes68Lewis HamiltonFerrari49Esteban OconHaas210Gabriel BortoletoSauber12025 Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix result<\/p>\n

Hunt replied: \u201cHe doesn\u2019t seem in a good place, does he? You try to second-guess things, don\u2019t you? I think that\u2019s what it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then you start looking, and the deeper that you go, you want to go back to, hang on a minute, that was a really good race for me. Let\u2019s use this setup for this race.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeep in his heart, he knows that\u2019s still probably not the right setup, but he had confidence in that setup. It\u2019s a case now where you have to trust the data and what the engineers are telling you, rather than what you think is going to happen and how you feel the situation is going to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s shades of Jenson Button in 2009 when he started so well and then all of a sudden the progress stopped with that car and other people caught up and then it was just sort of limping over the line.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: All you need to know about McLaren F1 Team from team principal to engine<\/a><\/p>\n

Do Jenson Button comparisons apply to Oscar Piastri in his quest to win the 2025 championship?<\/p>\n

As Hunt mentions, Jenson Button<\/a> also struggled to get his only championship win over the line in 2009.<\/p>\n

Button has already told Piastri not to copy him<\/a> in one aspect of his title chase, but the Brit did get over the line after a phenomenal start to the season.<\/p>\n

Button won six of the first seven races of the 2009 campaign, but only recorded two more podiums for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

Grand Prix starts306Pole positions8Podiums50Wins15Fastest laps8Points1235Championships1 (2009)Jenson Button\u2019s Formula 1 career<\/p>\n

With four races to go, Button had a 14-point lead over Rubens Barrichello, a far more comfortable buffer than Piastri possesses right now, especially as a win was only worth 10 points that year.<\/p>\n

Button received a hostile reception at the final race in Brazil<\/a> that year because he\u2019d beaten their hometown hero Barrichello to the title.<\/p>\n

Considering Norris was the driver booed in Mexico<\/a>, Piastri will hope he has the support of the Brazilian crowd at the next race as he looks to get his championship bid back on track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us on Google Discover McLaren driver Oscar Piastri fell behind teammate Lando Norris in the championship for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,590,113952,592,82],"class_list":["post-249085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mclaren","tag-mexico-city-grand-prix","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}