SAO PAULO — Oscar Piastri dismissed the lingering conspiracy theories of McLaren sabotage, saying championship lead has disappeared for easily explainable reasons on track.
Piastri has seen a 34-point lead over McLaren teammate Lando Norris evaporate since August’s Dutch Grand Prix.
Norris moved one point ahead by winning the Mexico Grand Prix, where he was booed by fans — a local journalist later told the Englishman in the post-race press conference it was because of a growing feeling among fans that McLaren has favoured him over Piastri.
Norris has finished ahead of Piastri at every race since Zandvoort, including at the Italian Grand Prix, where the Australian was asked to move over in the closing laps to let his teammate back past after a botched pit-stop had seen them change positions.
“Easy first question,” Piastri laughed on Thursday when asked about the lingering fan theories.
He said he understands what has gone wrong in the recent run of poor form. “No, it’s not the case [that there’s favourtism],” he said. “You know, I think the last couple of weekends have been a little bit more tricky, but we’ve got pretty clear answers on why that’s the case. There’s not really too many mysteries on what’s kind of happened. I think there’s some questions of kind of why some differences have cropped up in terms of how I need to drive and stuff like that, but there’s, yeah, everything is explainable.
“So there’s definitely none of that going on.” This weekend’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix is one of four races in the next five weeks to finish the season. It is the first time Piastri has gone into an F1 race without the title lead since April’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Piastri downplayed the suggestion it represented a massive change in how he feels about the run-in. “Not massively, I don’t think, you know, especially when it’s essentially even. It doesn’t change a whole lot, but for me the mindset all year has been about trying to just have the best weekends I can and ultimately drive as fast as I can.
“You know, at no point through the weekend have I kind of factored in more than normal. My risk-taking approach or anything like that. So I think for me that doesn’t change anything now that the championship order is a bit different, but yeah, I’ll be trying to just go as fast as I can and take the same risks that I normally do because it’s like nine times out of ten, that’s a good balance to have.
“And as you said in terms of technical struggles, everything’s explainable, but are there kind of other factors external to the pure craft that have played a part in some of the struggles recently, going back to Baku, of course you had a run where three out of four weekends were a bit tricky.”
Piastri’s run has been alarming for a man who at one stage looked to have one hand on a maiden F1 title. After Monza he crashed out of qualifying and the race at Baku’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, before he was barged out of the way by Norris at the beginning of the Singapore Grand Prix.
The recent Austin-Mexico City double header saw Norris finish second and first respectively, while Piastri failed to finish on the podium at either — the pair also collided at the Austin sprint race.
“I think Baku was obviously a bad weekend, but for extremely different reasons … It was just a messy weekend from start to finish, but ultimately the pace was pretty good, I was just trying a bit too hard,” Piastri said.
“Austin and Mexico were quite different in that I actually feel like I’ve executed reasonably well, but the lap time has just been not there and I think we’ve got some kind of evidence as to why it’s not been there, but I think the question as to why some things have not been working in the last couple of weekends and why some things have been, that part I’m not sure we’ll ever know the answer to.
“Knowing that there’s a difference is the biggest thing. So I don’t think, you know, Baku you could argue yes, there was some other things that may be corrected, but I think in Mexico and Austin it’s just been about lacking performance and trying to find out where to find it.”
