Oscar Piastri cites ‘other factors’ as F1 title slips away

Oscar Piastri has suggested there are ‘other factors’ at play in his inability to get on top of his McLaren MCL39.

Piastri led the Drivers’ Championship by 34 points following the Dutch Grand Prix, but now trailed teammate Lando Norris by 24 points with three races remaining.

Oscar Piastri admits ‘something has been a bit odd’ in recent races

Piastri won the Dutch GP as F1 returned from its mid-season break, a race from which Norris retired with an oil line issue.

However, the Australian has not climbed onto the podium since, while his teammate has won the last two races.

Piastri’s recent run of form comes in stark contrast to that experienced earlier in the year, when he dominated in China and won five times in eight races.

The spark looked to have returned in Brazil, when the former championship-leader all but matched Norris in the sole hour of practice, only to crash out of the Sprint and pick up a penalty while fighting for second in the grand prix itself.

But even then, Norris had the edge when it came to outright pace both in qualifying and the race as he extended his lead in the title fight.

“I the last weekends in particular, are a similar trend,” Piastri observed.

“Austin, I had to drive very, very differently. Mexico the same.

“It’s kind of one thing adapting to different conditions, but when the way you’ve driven for the whole season has worked so well, it’s kind of difficult to go away from that.

“There’s been a lot of learning on that side of things and trying to adapt to different things,” he added.

“[Brazil], practice was really, really strong. I felt like I couldn’t go slow in practice, pretty much. And then, through the rest of the weekend, things just went away from us a bit more.”

Norris has benefited from a revised front suspension on the McLaren.

Introduced in Canada, the tweak is aimed at changing the feel across the front axle.

It’s a solution Piastri tried, but elected not to adopt, reasoning that rather than being an outright upgrade, it was simply an option.

While there was low grip in Mexico and Austin, a different tyre conundrum was revealed in Interlagos.

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“The soft tyre was obviously behaving very strangely,” Piastri said.

“It was hardly better than the medium. The grip conditions [on Saturday] were, again, very bizarre; to not go any quicker from Q1 to Q3 is almost unheard of – especially with so much rain.

“Clearly, something has been a bit odd.

“The car’s been more or less the same. We’re trying to put it in the same window, but just other factors have made things difficult.

“But I’m also trying to work on how I can adapt to that better and kind of add more tools to my arsenal.”

Now 24 points adrift of Norris, Piastri has three weekends to claw back the differences; three grands prix and a sprint making for a maximum of 83 points still to place for.

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