Jacques Villeneuve believes Oscar Piastri must return to F1 after the winter break as a “completely new man” after the disappointment of losing the F1 drivers’ championship.<\/p>\n
The Australian led the standings for much of the 2025 season, but ultimately fell 13 points short of Lando Norris, with Max Verstappen between the McLaren team-mates in the final classification.<\/p>\n
Following the victory at the Dutch Grand Prix, Piastri headed into the final nine rounds of the campaign with a comfortable 34-point advantage over the Briton, with the Red Bull driver a further 70 points adrift.<\/p>\n
However, the 24-year-old’s loss of form, which peaked during his messy Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend and underwhelming performances in Austin, Mexico City and S\u00e3o Paulo saw him relinquish his once strong advantage.<\/p>\n
It will have been a bitter pill for the nine-time grand prix winner to swallow, having gone seven rounds without a podium during the run-in, whilst Verstappen and Norris wiped away his lead.<\/p>\n
When asked what Piastri will have learned from the experience, Villeneuve pinpointed one lesson the McLaren driver must take on board.<\/p>\n
“You have to be tough,” the 1997 F1 drivers’ champion told PokerScout. “That\u2019s the crux of it. On the outside, it looks all nice and chummy, but it\u2019s a tough world.<\/p>\n
“And it didn\u2019t work out this year, and he knows he had that championship in his hand. He was controlling it.<\/p>\n
“And that\u2019s why it\u2019s tougher for him than for Max, for example, who never expected to win it anyway.<\/p>\n
“Out of the three drivers, it\u2019s toughest for Oscar. Because he finished third in the end, behind Max, not even second. That will grate on him.”<\/p>\n
The former Williams, BAR, Renault and Sauber driver explained what Piastri must do over the offseason to return with a “fresh” slate and no lingering title-loss hangover.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s something that he will have to digest this winter,” the Canadian said.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully for him, he comes back to that first test a completely new man, forgetting completely about this season. He starts from zero, and fresh.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacques Villeneuve believes Oscar Piastri must return to F1 after the winter break as a “completely new man”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,2476,578,2479,2477,2480,2478,930,576,577,932,1885,2475,582,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-361210","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-daniel-ricciardo","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-f1-calendar","13":"tag-f1-live","14":"tag-f1-results","15":"tag-f1-standings","16":"tag-ferrari","17":"tag-formula-1","18":"tag-formula1","19":"tag-lewis-hamilton","20":"tag-max-verstappen","21":"tag-motorsport","22":"tag-racing","23":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361210","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=361210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}