{"id":262249,"date":"2025-11-05T01:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T01:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262249\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T01:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T01:00:10","slug":"oscar-piastri-f1-news-mclaren-favouritism-lando-norris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262249\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri F1 news: McLaren favouritism Lando Norris"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new theory on <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"text-link-default lg:hover:text-link-hover visited:text-link-pressed\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sen.com.au\/news\/2025\/11\/04\/f1-news-oscar-piastri-mclaren-points-and-driver-title-race\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Oscar Piastri\u2019s late-season slump<\/a> in form has emerged with former F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve suggesting the Australian has simply reached his limit.<\/p>\n<p>The star Aussie driver has relinquished a commanding lead in the race to be crowned world champion and now trails McLaren teammate Lando Norris by one point.<\/p>\n<p>Piastri had led Norris by as many as 34 points given he won seven of the opening 15 rounds, but the 24-year-old has not been on the podium since Monza in early September, while his British peer has surged.<\/p>\n<p>Norris\u2019 recent victory in Mexico put him back in the lead for the first time since April.<\/p>\n<p>Creeping up behind them both is defending champion Max Verstappen, who in August was more than 100 points off the lead and looked resigned to give up his hopes of a fifth straight title.<\/p>\n<p>With four races left on the 2025 calendar, Villeneuve simplified the Piastri issue.<\/p>\n<p>Amid conspiracy theories of preferential treatment towards Norris by McLaren, the 1997 champion said what is happening to Piastri happens in all sports.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have teams that will have an average season \u2013 I\u2019m not talking racing now, in any sport \u2013 then you get closer and closer to finals, to the playoffs, and suddenly they\u2019re the best team out there,\u201d Villeneuve said on The F1 Show.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou see it in every sport. And why? For what reason? They were average all season, and teams that have been winning every game, they collapse.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt happens all the time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t have an extremely fantastic Lando early in the season, not the Lando we had that last at the end of last year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe kept saying, \u2018oh, that\u2019s because Piastri has stepped up, he\u2019s now on Lando\u2019s pace, and even quicker\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut was it actually Piastri stepping up, or Lando that just wasn\u2019t on it?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe kept saying he wasn\u2019t very comfortable with the car, and maybe that made Piastri complacent a bit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen all you have to fight is your teammate, maybe you don\u2019t push to that last limit, that last tenth of a second.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSuddenly we get Baku and we get Max (Verstappen) that\u2019s winning everything, and Lando stepped up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLando is driving faster and better than he\u2019s been all season, and Piastri is not stepping up. He was already at his limit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you have to go that extra two tenths \u2013 and Martin (Brundle) will have had the same issues when he was racing \u2013 certainly you find problems in the car that did not exist.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you drive within the limit, the car is perfect. It\u2019s easy. You drive, you save your tyres, and suddenly you have to go a couple of tenths faster, you can\u2019t drive the car anymore. Everything is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Next up on the calendar is the Brazil Grand Prix which will air ar 4am AEDT on Monday November 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new theory on Oscar Piastri\u2019s late-season slump in form has emerged with former F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-262249","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-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262249","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=262249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}