There is something unusually extreme about a Formula 1 title contender saying “there were a few things I needed to change pretty majorly in how I was driving” in the closing stages of a championship battle.
Oscar Piastri’s last couple of weekends have been unusual, though. His championship lead has crumbled and turned into a one-point deficit after back-to-back difficult weekends and a big performance swing towards McLaren team-mate Lando Norris.
Piastri’s drop-off has been so sudden, and so severe, it seems very strange on the surface. He has gone from scoring 14 podiums in the first 16 races of 2025 to having a four-race run without finishing inside the top three, and a 34-point lead after Norris retired from the Dutch Grand Prix has vanished in the five races since.
Crashing out of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix didn’t help, but in the US and Mexico, Piastri was simply too slow. And some progress has been made in untangling his “mystery” lack of pace.
The idea that it involves McLaren favouring Norris has been rife for some time on social media, but that's nonsense.
Even though the constructors’ championship is secure there is no sense in McLaren hurting one of its drivers - as even the most basic logic will tell you that McLaren needs to be sure one of its drivers beats Verstappen, so compromising the one with the most points coming into Mexico would be nonsensical.
And even if McLaren preferred Norris to be champion, and wanted to facilitate that, why hobble Piastri to such a degree that he’s so far off the pace that he’s behind Verstappen – and therefore not even helping Norris’s points swing against the Red Bull driver?
And that’s before you factor in why McLaren would pay a driver millions of dollars just to screw them over.
Questioning strategic choices and identifying potential patterns in when McLaren interferes and when it doesn’t is one thing, but any kind of direct performance tampering falls down to even basic scrutiny.
But what about some more legitimate theories for what could, even accidentally, be holding Piastri back?
The real reason
When Piastri talked about his driving changes on Sunday, he was referring to the specifics of the demands at this track rather than a wholesale style adjustment a la Daniel Ricciardo a few years ago, and that “it’s more about adding some tools to the toolbox rather than re-inventing myself”.
This was very close in vocabulary and in tone to what McLaren boss Andrea Stella had said on Saturday, and came off the back of a race in which Piastri was unfortunate to have to battle a couple of extra setbacks but did so very well. A podium would have been not just possible, but probable, had things gone more cleanly.
The work Piastri did on his driving “trying to unlock” the pace the McLaren clearly had in Mexico must have played a part in that - although he was not completely convinced. He said he “potentially made some steps” but spending so much of the race in traffic meant it needed a deeper dive away from the weekend to be sure.
It did become clearer what Piastri was trying to unpick and improve. McLaren’s best explanation for Piastri’s US-Mexico struggle remains that the combination of sliding and low-grip conditions, despite hot track surfaces, prevalent both in Austin and Mexico requires a type of driving that Stella said “comes relatively naturally for Lando, and less naturally for Oscar”.
Norris drives with a degree of sensitivity in his steering inputs and steering/throttle overlap that, when he’s happy with the car and has the feeling he needs, seems perfectly suited for loading the car up at the entry in low-grip conditions to be able to use tiny slides to dance through the corner.
Piastri is more comfortable braking later and with a bigger turn-in, which makes him mighty at higher grip levels - but at lower grip levels and/or when the car slides in a certain way, it perhaps saps a bit of confidence and makes his turn-in more hesitant at both low and high speed. This was visible in qualifying laps in Mexico where Norris’s car almost looked like it had more front grip, such was the difference in initial turn-in.
Piastri improved as the weekend went on, and the individual losses were minimal - but pretty much everywhere. So it added up quickly over the whole lap and went as far as Piastri not having any of his usual strengths, even at high speed.
There’s a degree of assumption in all of that, but Piastri himself backed it up. Though he seemed unsure on Saturday that there was something core in his driving holding him back in Mexico, because his natural style has often been so effective this year, by Sunday he seemed to be more on McLaren’s page.
“For some reason, the last couple of weekends have required a very different way of driving,” he said.
“And what's worked well for me in the last 19 races, has needed something very different the last couple of weekends and trying to wrap my head around why has been a bit of a struggle.
“But ultimately [the race] was about trying to experiment with some of those things because I would agree, I think driving the way I've had to drive these last couple of weekends is not particularly natural for me.”
Though “a little bit strange” for Piastri to get his head around the fact that he could not just drive the way that had won him seven races this year, it is to Piastri’s credit that he accepted the premise and attempted to work on. More belligerent drivers would double down and blame the car.
That stands Piastri in good stead. He should also be better off for this experience at the same time because it will help him become, in the words of Stella, “a more complete version of a Formula 1 driver”. But his understanding means he is less likely to overcorrect for what might be termed more ‘normal’ conditions this season.
Piastri is willing to accept that “these last couple of weekends, the car or tyres or something has required quite a different way of driving” - so he tried to adapt to them. But because he buys into the idea it is a specific set of circumstances he will not completely contort his driving.
In other words, when he goes to Brazil, he should default to what’s worked for him in the past - and if McLaren’s right, then Piastri should be right back at the level he has been for most of 2025.
If he isn’t, and his alarming dip persists, his title bid will collapse completely – and then there will be fresh questions for McLaren to answer about the cause.
