Oscar Piastri warned ‘that’s where it goes wrong’ in wild new slump theory
A new theory has been posed to explain Oscar Piastri's recent downturn.
The downturn experienced by Oscar Piastri in recent races could be a red herring of sorts, according to Jacques Villeneuve.
The 1997 world champion has suggested Piastri has begun to struggle because he was already at his limit competing against an underperforming teammate.
Jacques Villeneuve has proposed a new theory explaining Oscar Piastri’s dip in performance
Piastri now trails McLaren teammate Lando Norris by a single point after finishing fifth in the Mexico City Grand Prix.
Norris won the race to reclaim the lead in the drivers’ standings for the first time since the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix – Round 5 of the season.
During the opening rounds, Piastri proved more than a match for his more experienced colleague, winning five times in eight races from the Chinese Grand Prix.
It’s been tougher going more recently, coinciding with the chasing pack closing in on McLaren after the squad enjoyed a healthy performance margin earlier in the year.
Following his retirement at the Dutch Grand Prix, a race won by Piastri, Norris has finished off the podium just once.
That came in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, where his Australian colleague crashed out on the opening lap.
Since then, Piastri has finished fourth in Singapore, and then fifth in both the United States and Mexico City Grands Prix.
That has prompted Villeneuve to suggest that, as the pressure has mounted, the nine-time race winner has wilted while Norris has risen to the occasion.
“You see it in every sport,” Villeneuve said on The F1 Show.
“You have teams that will have an average season – I’m not talking racing now, in any sport – then you get closer and closer to finals, to the playoffs, and suddenly they’re the best team out there.
“And why? For what reason? They were average all season, and teams that have been winning every game, they collapse.
“It happens all the time.”
It’s that concept Villeneuve suggests is at play among the McLaren duo, with Piastri having flattered against his teammate with a dominant car at his disposal.
“We didn’t have an extremely fantastic Lando early in the season, not the Lando we had that last at the end of last year,” Villeneuve argued.
“We kept saying, ‘oh, that’s because Piastri has stepped up, he’s now on Lando’s pace, and even quicker’.
“But was it actually Piastri stepping up, or Lando that just wasn’t on it?
“He kept saying he wasn’t very comfortable with the car, and maybe that made Piastri complacent a bit.
“When all you have to fight is your teammate, maybe you don’t push to that last limit, that last tenth of a second.
“Suddenly we get Baku and we get Max [Verstappen] that’s winning everything, and Lando stepped up.
“Lando is driving faster and better than he’s been all season, and Piastri is not stepping up. He was already at his limit.
“When you have to go that extra two tenths – and Martin [Brundle] will have had the same issues when he was racing – certainly you find problems in the car that did not exist.
“When you drive within the limit, the car is perfect. It’s easy. You drive, you save your tyres, and suddenly you have to go a couple of tenths faster, you can’t drive the car anymore. Everything is wrong.”
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Villeneuve argued the lack of updates serve only to underscore his opinion.
McLaren switched off development of its F1 2025 car early ahead of significant new rules for next season, channelling its resources into that project.
That has seen the chasing pack reel in the papaya machinery, giving rise to the likes of Verstappen in the drivers’ championship.
But unable to deliver performances as he did earlier in the season, while Norris car, has left Villeneuve to suggest that Piastri is somewhat caught in his own head.
“We have the same car. It hasn’t evolved that much, so there’s no reason for it to be driven differently,” Villeneuve said.
“Same tyres, it’s Pirellis, they don’t change; sometimes they’re softer, sometimes they’re not, the track is warmer and so on, but there isn’t that big of a difference.
“So it just [needs] your teammate to step up a little bit, and you’re realising, ‘Oh, how do I do that?’
“It gets in your head, and you just get slower and slower and slower, and you start inventing setups that don’t exist.
“You start doubting your way of driving. You look at the data and you say, ‘Oh, my teammate is one point quicker in that corner, I need to drive differently’.
“That’s when it goes wrong. You have to remember what you were doing that was good, and just step up a little bit.”
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