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In Oscar Piastri’s best-ever Formula 1 season, the Australian driver has never had it worse.
In a 2025 title fight that he’s led for 15 of the 21 rounds, Piastri will need a seismic momentum shift that’s becoming increasingly difficult to imagine, and a smattering of luck that wasn’t forthcoming in Sunday’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix, where the 24-year-old McLaren driver finished fifth to extend his late-season stumble to five consecutive races without a podium finish.
With McLaren teammate Lando Norris winning a second straight grand prix to complete a weekend in Brazil where he took pole and won Saturday’s sprint race – and with Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen uncorking a comeback that hasn’t been seen in F1 for 36 years – Piastri’s latest muted showing saw him fall 24 points behind Norris for the lead of the championship, his biggest deficit of the season.
Piastri hasn’t been this far behind since a late-race spin in the rain at Albert Park in March saw Norris bolt to an immediate 23-point lead in the opening round in the Melburnian’s backyard; with just 83 points remaining across the final three rounds in Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, Piastri remains in mathematical contention, but has little form, no momentum and needs all the 50-50 moments to go his way.
Lap six on Sunday at Interlagos was one that didn’t.
With the race resuming after an early race safety car, race leader Norris bolted for the first corner and caught Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli, in second place, off-guard.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, in third, spied an opportunity around the outside of the left-hand turn, Piastri darting to the inside of the corner in a bold attempt to squeeze between Antonelli and the trackside wall.
Antonelli tightened his line, which caused Piastri to lock up and pinball Antonelli into Leclerc, whose Ferrari came to a halt without a front tyre, his race over.
Piastri was immediately investigated for the incident and subsequently given a 10-second penalty for causing the collision. McLaren switched tactics and pitted him twice in an attempt to mitigate the damage of the time penalty and vault him back into podium contention, but Piastri fell five seconds short, stuck behind a stubborn George Russell (Mercedes) in the closing stages.
The penalty was line-ball – Piastri only locked up because Antonelli was squeezing him for space – but on a weekend where he never had an answer to Norris’ pace in the sister car, his post-race tone was one of mild exasperation rather than white-hot rage, his mood reflective of a stellar season that first began to wobble in September and has teetered since.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Piastri said “no, I don’t think so” when asked if regretted the attempt to overtake Antonelli.
“I had a very clear opportunity, I went for it,” he said.
“The other two [Antonelli and Leclerc] on the outside braked quite late … I mean, there was obviously a bit of a lock-up into the corner, but that was because I could see Kimi was not going to give me any space.
“I can’t disappear, but the decision is what it is.”
After Piastri’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix win in April, when he took the lead of the world championship for the first time, and his error-free run that followed, local hopes were raised that Australia could have a F1 world champion for the first time since Alan Jones in 1980. But his season has unravelled since Norris’ lowest moment, the British driver’s non-finish in the Dutch Grand Prix in August that coincided with Piastri’s seventh victory and 34-point championship lead.
In the six rounds since, Piastri has one podium finish – third in Italy, when he was asked to move aside for Norris late in the race by McLaren after a botched pitstop resulted in Norris relinquishing second place – and a growing list of missteps that Sunday’s touch-and-go penalty only adds to.
In Saturday’s Sao Paulo sprint race, Piastri crashed out of third place on a damp track as Norris won; since Monza, Norris has scored 115 points to his teammate’s 57. What seemed like an anomalous mistake when Piastri crashed in the following race in Azerbaijan became a coincidence, then a trend. With the clock ticking down on the 24-round season, it’s a run of outs that couldn’t be timed worse.
By contrast, Norris has taken pole position at the past two rounds and led 130 of the 142 laps, while Verstappen’s remarkable charge from a pit-lane start in Sao Paulo to third – overcoming an early race puncture along the way – marked the first time a driver had started from the pits and finished on a grand prix podium since Nigel Mansell for Ferrari at the 1989 French Grand Prix.
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The reigning four-time world champion now sits 49 points behind Norris and is a longshot at best with so few points remaining despite his formidable display at Interlagos; the Dutchman has outscored Norris by 21 points in the past six rounds, but ruled himself out of title contention after he qualified a season-worst 16th in Brazil on Saturday.
Given Verstappen’s deficit, Norris finding his best form of the season when it matters most and Piastri’s spiral, it might not be long until mathematics rule Piastri out too, given he’s effectively one grand prix win behind his teammate with three to play.
“Just try and get the most out of it that I can,” he said on Sunday when asked about his title prospects, a realistic answer that’s in keeping with Piastri’s measured approach, but hardly one that inspires optimism.
“Today, the penalty was one thing, but I don’t think the pace was at a level that I wanted it to be. The second half of the race was potentially not too bad, but the first stint was a little bit tough.
“I’m just trying to get back on top of things, and try and have the best weekends we can.”
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