Former Formula 1 driver Ralf Schumacher has a bleak outlook for Oscar Piastri. The Australian has not only lost his championship lead since the summer break, but also sees his teammate Lando Norris increasingly pulling away from him. According to Schumacher, it’s make or break for Piastri at the GP Las Vegas. If Max Verstappen still has a realistic chance of the title, the former driver predicts that McLaren will definitely choose Norris.
Oscar Piastri had a firm grip on the drivers’ championship after the Dutch GP in Zandvoort, but that has since changed. The Australian was 34 World Championship points ahead of his closest title rival Lando Norris after the Dutch race in the dunes, but before the GP Las Vegas, Piastri is 24 points behind the same Norris. Piastri’s fall in the championship is partly due to the recent slump in form of the man from Melbourne. While Norris won the last two races, his teammate could not gather more than twenty World Championship points.
Former Formula 1 driver Ralf Schumacher thinks that Piastri therefore runs the risk of becoming the second driver at McLaren in Vegas. “Piastri now clearly needs to step up,” Schumacher says in the Backstage Boxengasse podcast. “He knows that. He is now losing ground and I would almost say that if something clear happens again, the difference will be too large.” Piastri crashed during the sprint race in Brazil, so he couldn’t score valuable points on Saturday in São Paulo. A day later, nothing more than a fifth place was in it for the Australian, partly due to a ten-second time penalty for the collision with Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Verstappen
According to Schumacher, Piastri’s fate within McLaren largely depends on what Max Verstappen can still achieve. “If Max Verstappen still has a small chance (of the title) for some reason, the team will probably say at some point that the number one is now established,” predicts the current analyst. “Because they don’t want to take that risk anymore, and of course Piastri wants to prevent that at all costs.”
