Former Oscar Piastri insider speaks out on McLaren ‘conspiracy theories’

Kim Keedle, Oscar Piastri’s trainer up until the end of last season, does not believe in the “conspiracy theories” surrounding the Australian driver and McLaren one bit.

Piastri has seen his F1 2025 title challenge fall apart despite working himself into a commanding position by the halfway point of the year. Unfounded rumours have done the rounds online which point the finger at McLaren for favouring Lando Norris, but Keedle absolutely does not believe this to be the reason for Piastri’s slump.

Former Oscar Piastri trainer quashes McLaren ‘conspiracy theories’

Following the Dutch Grand Prix, Round 15 of 24, Piastri was 34 points clear of Norris at the top of the Drivers’ Championship. With three rounds to go, Norris is P1, and Piastri 24 adrift, having not finished on the podium in his last five grands prix.

During an appearance on the SEN Breakfast podcast, Piastri’s former trainer Kim Keedle was asked how it is possible for Piastri’s McLaren MCL39 to go from the fastest car on the grid, to suddenly lacking pace. It was put to him that this only fuels the conspiracy theories of McLaren favouritism which swirl online.

McLaren has firmly denied any such suggestion, with CEO Zak Brown going as far as to say that they would rather lose the Drivers’ Championship to Max Verstappen than favour either Norris or Piastri.

Keedle, while acknowledging that he “is not in the inner sanctum this year”, stressed that he knows “the way that McLaren operates”, and so he also is having none of the favouritism talk.

“I can understand that externally, it might look a little bit suspicious, but McLaren are very fair, and do handle it very well internally,” he continued.

“I think that the difficult thing with Formula 1 is that, obviously, throughout the season, not only within McLaren, but amongst the other teams, there’s so much development and stuff going on.

“So at the start of the season, yeah, McLaren were clearly the fastest car on the grid, and Oscar was driving extremely well. But, then you have Red Bull catching up. And Max is obviously a pretty fierce competitor. And even Mercedes and Ferrari that can still come in and have their strong races. So it’s just not as easy anymore for McLaren to go out and dominate races.

“And add in, call it whatever you like, a little bit of lost confidence, or some difficult tracks for Oscar, and then all of a sudden, the margins in Formula 1 are so close that if you’re missing a tenth, the performance can drop off pretty quickly.

“So I don’t buy into any of the conspiracy theories. I think it’s all above board and very fair. I think it’s maybe just been a couple of difficult weeks, in what is a challenging situation, which is you’re a 24-year-old driver, which is pretty young, trying to win a world championship on a world stage.”

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At that point, Keedle was asked to expand on his comments about McLaren’s internal handling of the Piastri versus Norris title battle.

“I think that is the weird thing about Formula 1, which is that you’ve got, McLaren in particular, put the team first,” he said. “They’ve got very much a team-first approach, and they really try to build that culture around that. And I do think that they do a good job of that.

“But then at the same time, your biggest competitor is your teammate, and you’ve got two individual athletes trying to win a world championship.

“It’s a very fine balancing act, and it’s a pretty delicate thing to manage – have two big egos in a team that you can bring together to fight for the team, first and foremost, and to manage their expectations throughout the season.

“I think now that the Constructors’ Championship has been won by McLaren a couple of races ago, now both drivers can get down and focus on winning their individual world championship, which is obviously a pretty big thing for them.”

Three grands prix and one Sprint remains as Piastri bids to rescue his stuttering title bid.

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