Drivers’ Championship leader Oscar Piastri is searching for answers behind his lack of pace at the United States Grand Prix weekend as Max Verstappen dominated to significantly close the gap at the top of the standings.<\/p>\n
While the points margin between Piastri<\/a> and his McLaren<\/a> team mate Lando Norris<\/a> has ebbed and flowed throughout the 2025 season, Verstappen<\/a> remained on the fringes of the picture, with his deficit standing at 104 points following the Dutch Grand Prix.<\/p>\n However, the Red Bull<\/a> driver has out-qualified and out-raced both McLaren drivers in every session at the subsequent four Grands Prix, with the gap between him and Piastri now just 40 after the Australian could only claim fifth in Austin while Verstappen won.<\/p>\n Having struggled for pace across the Austin weekend and finishing 29.678s off the lead<\/a>, as well as retiring at Turn 1 of the Sprint in a collision involving Norris<\/a>, Piastri is determined to find answers for his difficulties in Texas.<\/p>\n \u201cToday was what it was,\u201d he reflected. \u201cI think, with the pace that I had, I did more or less everything. I gained a spot at the start and couldn\u2019t really ask much more with the pace that I had.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to try and understand why the pace was lacking this weekend, but not everything was bad. With the pace I had, I tried to execute the race the best as I could, and that\u2019s all I can ask for.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked how much of a threat he is feeling from Verstappen and Norris \u2013 who finished in second place to close his own points gap to the leader down to 14 \u2013 Piastri added: \u201cObviously, Max is closing in and so is Lando, but the gap has not been comfortable at any point this year.<\/p>\n “Yes, it has been a bit bigger at certain points, but at no point has it felt like I could relax or sit back.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mentality hasn\u2019t changed, and it certainly won\u2019t now. I\u2019m just trying to do the best job I can every weekend and naturally, the results will take care of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Formula 1 moves on to Mexico City next weekend as the three championship contenders prepare to battle it out once again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drivers’ Championship leader Oscar Piastri is searching for answers behind his lack of pace at the United States…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-211910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}