Oscar Piastri wary of Verstappen title challenge after ‘messy’ Baku weekend

Oscar Piastri described his Azerbaijan GP weekend as “messy” after crashing out in both qualifying and the race.

A crash in qualifying left him only ninth on the grid before the Championship leader skidded out of the race in Lap 1 and opened the door for a Max Verstappen to re-enter in the title race.

Oscar Piastri laments ‘messy’ weekend after ‘simple errors’

McLaren’s previous dominance in the season had made the likely destination of this year’s Drivers’ Championship to be one of their two drivers, but Verstappen’s back-to-back wins have fired the Dutchman back into contention.

The reigning World Champion now trails leader Piastri by 69 points and, when asked if the Red Bull man was not a title threat, the Australian refused to rule him out.

“I’m not going to rule him out,” Piastri said. “But I’m honestly not too concerned with that.

“I’m just trying to bounce back from this weekend and put in the best performances that I can.

“I know that if I get back to where I know I can be, then I’ll be more than okay, so that’s what I’m going to focus on.”

Piastri has been praised for his unflappable nature through his F1 career, with the Azerbaijan GP weekend the first real time errors have cost dearly.

His qualifying crash put him ninth on the grid and he then committed a jump-start, which gave him a five-second penalty, before losing grip off the racing line and crashing into Turn 5.

Piastri said it was a “simple error” as part of a “messy” weekend.

“I just locked up,” he said. “I think just ultimately misjudging the grip level. I probably lost that from dirty air, but I know better than that to expect the lack of grip.

“So I’m certainly not blaming it on anything else. It was two simple errors on my behalf that they cost today.

“There’s not been anything that different and I think for me, if I felt like I was in a completely different headspace, then it’s kind of easier to blame it on that and also a problem to rectify, I guess.

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“But this weekend’s felt like any other weekend, just unfortunately, there’s been far too many mistakes from start to finish. Every single session has been messy.”

A small saving grace for Piastri is that main title contender Lando Norris failed to fully capitalise on his team-mate’s DNF by only scoring six points in Baku. Piastri though said it was hard to take much comfort from that.

“Obviously, you’re never going to feel amazing after a weekend like this, but ultimately, I felt like the pace has still been good this weekend, and I think it’s rare that I have so many executional errors.

“So very much focused on putting that behind me, I would be much more concerned if these errors were because I was trying to make up time or do things like that. So obviously they are costly errors, but things that could be very, very easily rectified.”

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