Here's the thing about Oscar Piastri's season: it is a wild shift from where he started. The Australian spent the first half of 2025 edging out his team mate for race wins and steadily building a commanding lead in the Drivers' Championship, looking every bit the favourite. Then his fortunes unraveled starting at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. A scrappy weekend there saw him qualify P9, jump the lights, activate anti-stall, drop to the back of the field on the opening lap, and crash into the barriers.
From that point onwards, Lando Norris and Red Bull's Max Verstappen found an advantage over Piastri and relegated him to third place in the standings. While he was afforded the chance to shake off the disappointment and prepare for the new-for-2026 regulations, any thought of another title charge was quashed by Mercedes' early dominance. Norris offered McLaren some hope as he made the most of their upgrades to clinch victories in Hungary and the Netherlands, and he came close again last time out in Spain, where he overshadowed Piastri's painful drive to P8.
As the gulf between the team mates widens, James Hinchcliffe and Jolyon Palmer delved into Piastri's hopes of delivering a strong result in Baku—the circuit where he took his second career win in 2024—in the latest episode of F1 Nation alongside host Tom Clarkson.
"I think the ghosts of last week are probably more in his head than the ghosts of last year, to be honest," Hinchcliffe explained. "He had his team mate on pole—what should've been pole by an obscene margin had he not nearly binned it at the final corner in Qualifying. He was walking the race before the VSC, clearly the quickest car at the end but just couldn't get around, and it was one of the most anonymous weekends for Oscar. He was barely mentioned. He just sort of qualified where he did, raced where he did and you didn't really hear from him."
Hinchcliffe continued on the intra-team gap: "I think it's more about what happened last week, trying to figure out how to close that gap to Lando—what has he found? Where has this extra gear come from since we got to Hungary that we just haven't seen Oscar able to match? It's kind of been all season long. I thought early in the year that maybe Oscar was getting on top of the rules a little bit better, but where Lando was maybe struggling to figure certain things out, he's continued to improve, whereas it seems like Oscar hasn't been able to continue that trajectory as Lando's got better. It's going to be a tough weekend for him just because that's the current form within that team."
Former Renault driver Palmer went on to suggest that the lack of pressure in the championship should give Piastri the breathing space to find improvements, with McLaren sitting 197 points adrift of Mercedes. Palmer commented: "Oscar can be grateful that McLaren aren't in the championship fight in a way because otherwise we'd be looking at him in exactly the same way as we're looking at George [Russell]. He's capitulating this season."
Palmer added further context to the Australian's career trajectory: "Oscar had one half of a season last year where he looked like a champion and he drove like a champion. He was amazing, and bearing in mind he's an F3 and F2 champion, it felt this time last year like the second coming of a great Aussie champion. Could he do what Mark Webber didn't? It felt like it was the right thing, but when you actually look through Oscar's career in F1—he's had three and a half years now—half a year was amazing. Three years were basically [spent as] second driver to Lando."
While Palmer conceded that Piastri still has the potential to challenge at the top again and is capable of great drives—noting he could turn up and win in Baku—he pointed out that the handling of this season's car doesn't align with the Australian's driving preferences. He is not as comfortable sliding the car around as Norris, and low-grip tracks in Austin and Mexico exposed his limitations once the car suited him less than it did last year. Piastri will be hoping for a run of form, but also perhaps just for next winter and a bit of a reset right now, as every weekend feels like a real struggle.
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