Oscar Piastri suspects the “tough pills” he’s had to swallow in recent races will serve him well in the long term, even should he miss out on the Formula 1 title in 2025.
Piastri has encountered a drastic slump that sees him head into the Las Vegas Grand Prix 24 points behind McLaren team-mate Lando Norris with three events to go.
The Australian had possessed a 34-point advantage over Norris when he won at Zandvoort in August, but he has since gone five consecutive races without a podium.
That run – which contained two crashes on one weekend in Baku and a general struggle to extract pace in Austin and Mexico – has seen his championship bid unravel.
But while he also wound up in the barriers last time out in Brazil in the Sprint Race, Piastri has denied that there has been a trend behind his sharp downturn in results.
“I think Austin and Mexico were quite different to the other races that have not gone so successfully,” Piastri told media including Motorsport Week. “I think there was a clear pace deficit and something pretty fundamental that just wasn’t working.
“I think the other races have just been a combination of different things going wrong. Baku was what it was, Singapore from a performance standpoint actually was pretty solid, just the race obviously didn’t pan out exactly how I wanted, and I think even Brazil, the pace was good at points. I think the Sprint crash didn’t have a great impact on the rest of the weekend either.
“There were some things resulting from that that were suboptimal for the rest of the weekend, so I think from a pace performance point of view, I think Brazil was actually quite good. It was just that there was a lot of things that happened that meant the results weren’t on the table.
“So, for me it’s not been kind of, yes there’s been a string of races that have not gone very well but I don’t think they’ve been along the same lines.
“I think Austin and Mexico were, but the other races the performance has been there, but there’s been something going wrong, whether it be a mistake or a crash or something else going wrong.
“There’s just been things that have hampered the results. I don’t mean to look at it as kind of an it’s all been going wrong for the same reason what’s happened.
“There’s a couple of races where, yes, I needed to do some head scratching and work out what was going on, but the other races that have [been] tough, just been what some might say is a difficult world of motorsport.”
Piastri convinced setbacks will make him stronger
Piastri has also dismissed that he would’ve changed things to prevent such setbacks, citing each one has provided a lesson that will help him achieve future success.
“I think you know the first half of the season was incredibly strong,” he reviewed.
“Yes, there’s been a couple of races that have been learning experiences, but there’s also been a lot of moments that have been just kind of difficult to go through.
“But I think I’ve learned something from each of those moments. No matter how tough that has been, there’s been something that’s helped me in the future from all those events.
“So would I have liked the results to have been better? Yes, of course, but there’s going to be bumps along the road, not everything is going to be perfect.
“And ultimately I think trying to learn lessons and not just set myself up for this season, I want to try and obviously win at any opportunity I get for the rest of my career. And sometimes some of these tough pills to swallow are a part of trying to make that happen.”
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