Oscar Piastri finds silver lining despite ‘a lot of things going wrong’ admission

Oscar Piastri is finding solace in his flashes of pace, but has admitted that “a lot of things are going wrong” as his title chase falters.

The young Australian had held a 34-point lead over teammate Lando Norris after the Dutch Grand Prix, but a succession of positive results for the Briton combined with a drop in form for Piastri means he now trails his McLaren colleague by 24 points heading into the final three rounds – a 58-point swing.

Oscar Piastri admits ‘a lot of things going wrong’, but ‘flashes of really strong pace’

Piastri held a significant lead over Norris after his retirement at Zandvoort, but with a podium at Monza at the next round, that has been his most recent podium this season.

Retirement in Azerbaijan was followed by a fourth place finish in Singapore, alongside three fifth-place finishes in a row, most recently at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

Piastri also crashed out of the Sprint at Interlagos by running over a wet kerb at the wrong time – a place which also took two other drivers out on Saturday – and a collision with Norris in the Sprint in Austin saw both drivers retire.

While there is still time for Piastri to turn the championship around, a 24-point lead for Norris at this stage puts him firmly as title favourite with three rounds to go.

Despite the dip in Piastri’s results, however, he has taken positives in the “flashes of really strong pace” he has been able to show in the interim – and the challenge now is to make sure he holds that speed at every moment.

“Things have not been going easily, that’s for sure,” Piastri said in Sao Paulo on Sunday.

“I think this weekend, there were definitely moments and flashes where I felt very comfortable.

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“[In] practice, things were coming much more easily again, things felt really good. It kind of went away from us a little bit through the weekend.

“I think even just our pace as a team, I don’t think was as strong as it was on Friday, and the car kind of went in a direction that I wasn’t a big fan of.

“But, we tried our best to get the car in a good window, and obviously the Sprint crash made things much more difficult as well.

“So, there’s just a lot of things going wrong at the moment, but I think there are still flashes of really strong pace, and it’s just about trying to make sure I’ve got that all the time.”

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