Oscar Piastri adopts uncompromising stance as title fight intensifies

Oscar Piastri will not compromise his natural style of racing as his battle with Lando Norris for the world championship heats up.

The McLaren duo are split by just 31 points with eight races remaining, with the Australian in the driver’s seat.

Oscar Piastri weighs up risk-reward equation in F1 title fight

McLaren has gone to great lengths this season to ensure fairness between its drivers.

That saw Piastri asked to move aside for Norris during the latter stages of the Italian Grand Prix in a move many have criticised.

By handing over second place to his nearest title rival, Piastri accepted a six-point swing in the championship race – the gap that could have been 37 points instead now sits at 31.

“I’ve had a much bigger gap than this, and had it pretty much erased before the final round,” Piastri told PlanetF1.com and other outlets ahead of the Monza weekend.

“So I’ve got personal experience of this not being a comfortable gap.

“But, it’s still far too early to be calculating and settling for positions that aren’t first.

“For me, the approach is still exactly the same. That won’t change until the gap is pretty significantly bigger, or the amount of races is significantly smaller.”

Though acknowledging that his points lead over Norris is far from comfortable, Piastri also remained steadfast in his approach.

The way he has tackled the season to date has delivered him to where he is; to change it now makes no sense. And so it played out in Monza, where he dutifully obliged the team’s request as he has done in every other instance.

“A lot of it is from, in some ways, personal experiences in championships, but also just how, how I think as a person,” he said of his mindset.

“It’s just how I’ve always tried to go racing, you know, obviously trying to be taking the opportunities when they come, and obviously not taking too many risks.

“The risk attitude five races ago, you didn’t know the championship picture was going to look like this, and if you took a different amount of risk either way, then the gap is going to be potentially smaller than what it is.

“[It] could potentially be bigger, but I’d like to think that my approach to risk is pretty measured, so for me, that doesn’t really change regardless of the championship situation.”

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There is, however, one inescapable fact.

As the season accelerates towards its finale in Abu Dhabi, either Piastri or Norris will be world champion – the first McLaren driver to achieve that feat since Lewis Hamilton in 2008.

But it can be only one, creating an atmosphere of sharply contrasting emotions within the garage.

“We’ve spoken about it a little bit,” Piastri admitted.

“It’s a discussion that’s certainly not at the top of our list of important things. I think we’re just trying to get a feel of what we would like.

“For one of us, it’s going to be a pretty amazing time, and, for the other, it’s going to be pretty painful. The team and Zak [Brown, McLaren Racing CEO] are very sensitive to that, which is nice.

“We’ve spoken about a little bit, but I don’t think it really needs much more conversation.”

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