{"id":90454,"date":"2025-10-20T17:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T17:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/90454\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T17:32:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T17:32:10","slug":"david-croft-shares-what-mark-webber-is-privately-saying-about-oscar-piastris-f1-championship-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/90454\/","title":{"rendered":"David Croft shares what Mark Webber is privately saying about Oscar Piastri\u2019s F1 championship hopes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri had a very tricky weekend during the United States Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri<\/a> started the weekend 22 points clear of McLaren<\/a> teammate Lando Norris in the drivers\u2019 championship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, that doesn\u2019t tell the full story, with Piastri losing ground to Norris and Max Verstappen across the past few races.<\/p>\n

Verstappen won the United States Grand Prix<\/a> brilliantly, leading from pole position and never being under any pressure from any of the drivers around him.<\/p>\n

The Dutchman has now moved within 40 points of Piastri in the standings as he chases a fifth consecutive title.<\/p>\n

Position Drivers’ Championship PointsPts 1 336 2 314 3 273 4 237 5 173 6 127 7 88 8 70 9 39 10 37 <\/p>\n

Piastri hasn\u2019t finished on the podium in any of the last three races. The last time the 24-year-old went on a run like that, it started at the United States Grand Prix<\/a> last year, where he didn\u2019t return to the rostrum until Qatar.<\/p>\n

If he repeats that trend this year, there\u2019s no way Piastri will win his first championship this year, and it\u2019s up to his manager, Mark Webber<\/a>, to help him return to winning ways in Mexico City next year.<\/p>\n

Commentator David Croft<\/a> has now shared what Webber told him about Piastri\u2019s mindset behind the scenes, and what he needs to do to win the title this year.<\/p>\n

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

\"McLarenPhoto by Kym Illman\/Getty ImagesMark Webber privately saying that Oscar Piastri\u2019s \u2018head\u2019s up\u2019 after frustrating United States Grand Prix<\/p>\n

Croft was following Piastri while on commentary for Sky Sports<\/a> F1 (19\/10 9:10 pm) as he struggled to keep up with Lewis Hamilton and had to worry about George Russell behind him.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI was talking to Mark Webber, Oscar Piastri\u2019s manager, earlier today.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said there was nothing wrong with Oscar, his head\u2019s up, his chin\u2019s up. Yeah, he\u2019s lost a few points in his lead, but he\u2019s got a very healthy lead out in front.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs another race goes by, you\u2019ve got to reverse the trend at some stage. There\u2019s still an awful long way to go in this season, and I think it\u2019s going to give us an absolutely blockbuster finish this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I think Oscar Piastri has absolutely got the mental capacity to cope with this fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you remember back to F3, his championship-winning F3 season, his lead got whittled down there, and he coped very well there, with the pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin Brundle replied and said: \u201cYeah, and Oscar needs a solid weekend again, doesn\u2019t he? He has to go next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Oscar Piastri reflects on his lack of rhythm at the United States Grand Prix<\/p>\n

Piastri admitted his struggles throughout the weekend when speaking to the media after the race.<\/p>\n

He explained: \u201cIt is very important wherever you go [to get qualifying right]. I think today, race pace could have saved you, but I didn\u2019t really have that either. It\u2019s something I want to work on, obviously.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think qualifying has generally been consistently good; there\u2019s obviously been highs at certain points, but this weekend, apart from Baku, has been the first weekend where it has been a letdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if it has been sub-par before, it has still been pretty good. Some things to try and understand from this weekend because clearly it wasn\u2019t just related to qualifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

RANKDRIVERTEAMPOINTS1Max VerstappenRed Bull252Lando NorrisMcLaren183Charles LeclercFerrari154Lewis HamiltonFerrari125Oscar PiastriMcLaren106George RussellMercedes87Yuki TsunodaRed Bull68Nico HulkenbergSauber49Oliver BearmanHaas210Fernando AlonsoAston Martin12025 United States Grand Prix result<\/p>\n

Piastri admitted that he needs to work out why he couldn\u2019t find his rhythm before suggesting that it\u2019s still too soon for McLaren to decide to prioritise one of their drivers amid the growing threat of Verstappen.<\/p>\n

Webber has shared his feelings about McLaren\u2019s treatment of Piastri behind the scenes<\/a>, with several decisions seemingly going against him recently.<\/p>\n

Norris faced \u2018repercussions\u2019 for his contact with Piastri in Singapore<\/a>, but it didn\u2019t stop him from putting a further dent in his championship lead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us on Google Discover McLaren driver Oscar Piastri had a very tricky weekend during the United States…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[25799,42,68086,4262,43,7214,40,38,41,39,66337],"class_list":["post-90454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-david-croft","tag-headlines","tag-mark-webber","tag-mclaren","tag-news","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states-grand-prix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}