{"id":255935,"date":"2025-11-02T03:51:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T03:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/255935\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T03:51:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T03:51:12","slug":"damon-hill-feels-theres-only-one-possible-explanation-for-oscar-piastri-losing-his-way-at-mclaren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/255935\/","title":{"rendered":"Damon Hill feels there\u2019s only one possible \u2018explanation\u2019 for Oscar Piastri losing his way at McLaren"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Oscar Piastri was increasingly looking like the favourite to win the 2025 drivers\u2019 title, but his persistent plight has now seen Lando Norris move atop the F1 championship.<\/p>\n

Just one point separates McLaren<\/a> teammates Norris<\/a> and Piastri<\/a> atop the standings with four rounds of the 2025 F1 season<\/a> to play. Yet Piastri held a 34-point lead over Norris as recently as the end of August, when he also led Red Bull rival Max Verstappen<\/a> in third by 104 points.<\/p>\n

Those leads have now completely evaporated following a run of woe since the Dutch Grand Prix in round 15 of this year\u2019s 24. Norris and Verstappen have both outscored Piastri in each of the past five rounds, having earned 82 and 116 points respectively to the Australian\u2019s 47.<\/p>\n

McLaren have even seen the previously bulletproof Piastri crash out of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix<\/a>, when he also jumped the start of the race and had crashed in qualifying. Piastri crashed into Norris in the COTA Sprint<\/a>, too, and he was massively off the Briton\u2019s pace in Mexico City.<\/p>\n

\"McLarenPhoto by Clive Rose\/Getty ImagesDamon Hill\u2019s \u2018only explanation\u2019 for Oscar Piastri\u2019s struggles is that his mindset changed for the worse<\/p>\n

For Damon Hill<\/a>, there is only one possible explanation for why Piastri has lost his way, having taken seven Grand Prix wins and 13 podiums between rounds two and 15. The 1996 drivers\u2019 champion fears Piastri has changed his mindset concerning the title fight, and for the worse.<\/p>\n

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

ROUNDCHAMPIONSHIP LEADERMARGIN AT MCLARENAustralian GPNorris (25 points)23 points over PiastriChinese GPNorris (44 points)10 points over PiastriJapanese GPNorris (62 points)13 points over PiastriBahrain GPNorris (77 points)3 points over PiastriSaudi Arabian GPPiastri (99 points)10 points over NorrisMiami GPPiastri (131 points)16 points over NorrisEmilia Romagna GPPiastri (146 points)13 points over NorrisMonaco GPPiastri (161 points)3 points over NorrisSpanish GPPiastri (186 points)10 points over NorrisCanadian GPPiastri (198 points)22 points over NorrisAustrian GPPiastri (216 points)15 points over NorrisBritish GPPiastri (234 points)8 points over NorrisBelgian GPPiastri (266 points)16 points over NorrisHungarian GPPiastri (284 points)9 points over NorrisDutch GPPiastri (309 points)34 points over NorrisItalian GPPiastri (324 points)31 points over NorrisAzerbaijan GPPiastri (324 points)25 points over NorrisSingapore GPPiastri (336 points)22 points over NorrisUnited States GPPiastri (346 points)14 points over NorrisMexico City GPNorris (357 points)1 point over Piastri2025 F1 drivers\u2019 championship momentum between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris<\/p>\n

Piastri\u2019s woe convinces Hill that the 24-year-old stopped taking the 2025 season race-by-race and started looking toward the prize at the end of the line. The Melbourne native could become the third Australian to win the F1 drivers\u2019 championship<\/a>, and the first to since 1980.<\/p>\n

Hill told the Stay On Track podcast: \u201cHe had the luxury of a points advantage, and suddenly he drops the ball. Now, I remember Mark Webber<\/a> saying this guy has not even lost so much as a corner, or done a corner on a car before. And he gets to Baku, and he does two tubs.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiterally, the wheels fell off. The only explanation you can have for that is that somehow the mindset has changed from being someone who was just looking at each race and seeing it as separate individual challenges, which is the right way to go about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Damon Hill thinks the pressure of an F1 title fight weighed on Oscar Piastri<\/p>\n

Australia has not had an F1 champion to celebrate since Alan Jones won the 1980 title. The Melbourne native followed three-time champion Jack Brabham in becoming the champion, after the Hurstville, New South Wales native won the title in the 1959, \u201860 and \u201866 seasons.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: The best moments of Oscar Piastri\u2019s career in Formula 1<\/a><\/p>\n

CategoryLando NorrisOscar Piastri2025 points357356Grand Prix results128Grand Prix qualifying1010Grand Prix wins67Grand Prix poles65Grand Prix podiums1614Best finish1st1stRetirements21Fastest laps65Grand Prix points finishes1819Sprint results12Sprint Qualifying13Sprint wins10Sprint poles01Sprint podiums23Sprint retirements11The 2025 F1 teammate head-to-head battle of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri<\/p>\n

Piastri dethroning Norris atop the standings back in April even made him the first Australian to lead the championship since his manager, Webber, back in 2010. But his title hopes have stuttered ever since McLaren told Piastri to give P2 back to Norris in the Italian Grand Prix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hill now thinks Piastri leading the championship from round five until round 20 when Norris won the Mexico City Grand Prix would have weighed heavily on him. The Briton expects the weight of the championship fight has been a \u201cproblem\u201d that Piastri is struggling to manage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic,\u201d Hill added about being in an F1 title fight, having done so three times. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting. But it also gets to you, there\u2019s no doubt about it. And I wonder whether that\u2019s the Oscar problem, if there is such a thing as a problem, is there\u2019s this weight, literally a weight.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot get to the end, you\u2019ve got to lead. You wish they could call it now. If they could stop the championship and say, \u2018And now we have to declare a winner, because we can\u2019t do the last five races\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd as we\u2019re talking now, he\u2019s not in the lead. He\u2019s one point behind. But for a long time, Oscar was holding this weight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us on Google Discover Oscar Piastri was increasingly looking like the favourite to win the 2025 drivers\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,39259,578,576,577,590,592,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-255935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-damon-hill","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-mclaren","15":"tag-oscar-piastri","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255935","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=255935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}