Oscar Piastri told what he must do to get back to the level of Lando Norris as title bid fades

Oscar Piastri has been told he must learn to “personalise” the McLaren car in the same way Lando Norris has if he hopes to return to the level of his teammate.

The Melbourne native was the favourite for the F1 title coming out of the mid-season break, but a dramatic loss of form has seen him fall behind Norris and with one eye over his shoulder at Max Verstappen.

Oscar Piastri told to ‘personalise’ McLaren car in bid to revive title hopes

The previously unflappable Piastri has been enduring a run of poor results since Azerbaijan, as first Verstappen and now Norris look to be at their best.

The result is Norris being 24 points ahead of Piastri, while Verstappen is 25 behind. With three race weekends left, Piastri’s title bid is not completely dead, but he has been told by 1997 world cha pion Jacques Villeneuve that he must learn to “personalise” the McLaren car if he hopes to get back to his previous level of prominence.

“Norris worked on his car,” he said on Sky Sports. “He’s done the first step, and he really got in with the team to personalise that car.

“Unless Piastri is capable of doing the same thing, you’ll never get back to that level.”

Despite his troubles, Piastri has always maintained his positivity and believes there are “flashes” where he feels comfortable in the car.

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

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

“[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 it 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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