Five reasons behind Oscar Piastri F1 title collapse claimed by Martin Brundle

Faltering in his title quest, Martin Brundle believes there are five reasons why Oscar Piastri is having a difficult time of late, and number five is Lando Norris.

With three race weekends remaining this season, Piastri finds himself trailing Norris by 24 points as his streak of races without a podium finish extended to five at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Oscar Piastri’s troubles: Does Martin Brundle have the answers?

⦁ Piastri troubles down to head, luck, setup, tracks, and Norris
⦁ McLaren driver pinpoints a sixth reason, Monza team orders
⦁ Another momentum swing is not inconceivable

Winning the Dutch Grand Prix when Formula 1 returned from its annual summer break, Piastri surged 34 points ahead of his teammate Norris.

It was his seventh win of the championship and his 13th podium in 15 races before the Aussie added a 14th at the Italian Grand Prix. That, though, was his last top-three result.

Blighted by a barrage of crashes in Azerbaijan and the Austin and Brazilian Sprints, he was then penalised for causing a collision in the Brazil GP where he finished down in fifth place.

With Norris claiming the win after starting on pole in arguably the Briton’s most dominant race weekend of the season, as he also won the Sprint from lights to flag, Piastri trails his teammate by 24 points with 83 still in play.

It’s been a huge turnaround in form with Piastri once the standout driver, but now it’s Norris.

It begs the question, where has it gone wrong for Piastri?

Former F1 driver turned Sky Sports pundit Brundle believes he has the answer.

“Piastri was so unlucky again, the dice simply won’t roll for him,” he wrote in his column for Sky F1.

“The last time he was on the podium was back in September in Monza. He’d been on the podium 13 of the 15 races prior to that including seven victories.

“Norris was quicker than him in Monza, followed by the double shunt and jump start horror story in Azerbaijan, the first-lap skirmish with Norris in Singapore, the Sprint race in Austin which cost both cars heavily, and his pace simply hasn’t quite been there since.

“Is it Oscar’s head, just a sporting run of bad luck, has there been a setup problem with the car, or has it been a series of tracks which don’t suit him so well?

“Probably a little of each just at the same time as Norris found overdrive and confidence.”

Oscar Piastri v Lando Norris: McLaren head-to-head scores

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Did McLaren’s Monza team orders play a role?

Piastri, though, has hinted that there’s a sixth reason why he’s struggled, at least in Baku where he crashed in qualifying and again in the grand prix – McLaren’s team orders at Monza.

That Sunday the 24-year-old was ordered by McLaren to give second place back to Norris after a slow pit stop cost the Briton a position to his teammate.

Piastri wasn’t happy with the call but told McLaren, “if you really want me to do it then I’ll do it.”

He finished the grand prix in third place behind Norris and later brushed the controversial team orders.

However, today he admits it was a factor in his disastrous Azerbaijan weekend.

“Ultimately [it’s] a combination of quite a few things,” Piastri said on the Beyond the Grid podcast

“Obviously the race before that was Monza, which I didn’t feel was a particularly great weekend from my own performance, and there was obviously what happened with the pit stops.”

He continued: “I think there was kind of some things in the lead-up, let’s say, that were maybe not the most helpful and then things that happened on the weekend.”

Things like his FP1 engine issue, running the C6 tyres, and his own driving.

“There’s no beating around the bush,” he continued, “that was the worst weekend I’ve ever had in racing, but probably the most useful in some ways.

“So, when you can start to look at things like that, normally that helps you out quite a lot.

“(If) you look at some of the names that have had some pretty shocking weekends, or almost unbelievable weekends or races or moments in their career where things have gone wrong; it happens to anyone.

“There’s not one person in racing that doesn’t have some kind of disastrous story of how a weekend went wrong for them. Looking at it from that perspective does help a lot, but you still need to learn the things you need to learn from weekends like that.”

Azerbaijan was the first race in Piastri’s five-race run without a top three result.

All is not lost for Oscar Piastri

Although Piastri trails Norris by 24 points, meaning all the Briton needs is to finish runner-up in the remaining three grands prix and he’ll win the title no matter what the Australian does, all is not lost.

One DNF for Norris, coupled with a win for Piastri, will turn the table on its head again with the Australian racer moving a point ahead.

If he can mimic Norris’ recovery after his wretched Canadian Grand Prix weekend in Las Vegas and Qatar, there’d be 10 points in it heading into the season finale. A win in the Sprint reduces that to nine.

It would be all to play for in Abu Dhabi.

Momentum this season began with Norris, switched to Piastri, and has since returned to Norris. There’s nothing to say there won’t be another swing in the final three race weekends.

Although Piastri has had his troubles in recent weeks with certain tracks, his team principal Andrea Stella says, “there’s no problem in terms of track layout coming in the next races”.

It’s not inconceivable that Piastri could yet pull off the championship win.

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