Oscar Piastri: cool, clinical, tireless? Not according to former world champion Jacques Villeneuve. While the current World Championship leader has been widely praised for his cool qualities in recent months, the race weekend in Baku turned into a crash fest for him. According to Villeneuve, the Piastri bubble has now burst, and the Australian will have to prove that he can hold his own – even when pursued by Norris and Max Verstappen.
Piastri made a surprising number of mistakes when Formula 1 landed in Azerbaijan last weekend. After a crash in qualifying, he had to start from a disappointing ninth place on Sunday. However, his race was short-lived; after a false start, he crashed his McLaren into the wall in the opening lap. Despite the dropout, he still has a 25-point lead over teammate Lando Norris, who only benefited marginally with a seventh-place finish. Meanwhile, Verstappen emerged as a serious contender by winning his second Grand Prix in a row.
‘Bizarre Performance’
“It was a very poor performance, both from Piastri and Norris,” Jacques Villeneuve reflected to OLGB. “Piastri fared the worst. For some reason, he was on the edge all weekend. His driving style looked erratic on Friday, then he made that mistake in qualifying. Then came the false start, followed by a mistake in the very first lap,” the Canadian summed up.
“It was really strange, because Piastri had built up such a large lead in the championship,” emphasized Villeneuve. “But we’ve seen often enough that the hunted – the prey in this case – faces much more pressure. Still, it’s bizarre how this weekend unfolded, although he lost relatively few points compared to Norris. But if he has another weekend like this, the pressure will only increase. We always saw Piastri as a cool, unshakeable block, but that was clearly different in Baku. I think the bubble has burst a bit.”
“The question is whether this was a one-off,” added the former champion. “Of course, anyone can have such a bad luck day. It doesn’t matter how good you are; even Max Verstappen has had weekends where we thought: ‘Okay, this was a bit exaggerated.’ The strange thing is that both McLaren drivers fell short this time. Norris did not excel either. He may not have crashed his car into the wall, but he should have qualified at least in P2.”
