Aside from his unforced errors in Baku and incident with Norris in Singapore, the Australian driver has encountered another more pressing issue in recent weeks – a fundamental lack of pace.<\/p>\n Only in the last seven days has a lack of performance been a major limiting factor for Oscar Piastri. Previously, it was the small margins that made the difference when the McLaren pair fought for victory.<\/p>\n With a six-tenth gap to Norris<\/a> in Mexico qualifying, however, this is no longer the ace.<\/p>\n Piastri is uncharacteristically off the pace, unable to match his teammate in short or long runs. Unless this trend quickly reverses, the 24-year-old could see this year’s Championship slipping through his fingers.<\/p>\n In this context, there will be intense work behind the scenes to determine why the Australian is struggling so much. Piastri certainly doesn’t seem convinced his lap-times warrant such major losses to his teammate.<\/p>\n Speaking to Sky Sports after yesterday’s results, Andrea Stella outlined what he believes is Piastri’s limiting factor:<\/p>\n “Obviously there’s a little bit to review on Oscar’s side. More difficult for him to use the car when the conditions are so sliding, in a way like it was also in Austin. So something we need to review and make sure we look at for tomorrow.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n “Like I said before, Oscar in relation to Lando loses a few milliseconds pretty much in every corner.<\/em><\/p>\n “So it’s more him getting the right feeling with these conditions and pushing that little bit more in every single corner.<\/em><\/p>\n “But obviously, here, it’s very difficult to go that little bit more without having an issue. So something definitely that we can work on and improve for tomorrow.<\/em><\/p>\n “I think the race pace is good for both drivers, I’m sure Oscar will be able to recover some positions.”<\/em><\/p>\n After Max Verstappen’s commanding victory in COTA, Andrea Stella emphasised that McLaren should be measured in their response to Red Bull’s resurgence.<\/p>\n The Italian argued that a failure to optimise the MCL39<\/a>, rather than lack of underlying pace, was the team’s main issue. Given the margin of Lando Norris’ Pole Position in Mexico, this hypothesis seems to have solid grounds.<\/p>\n At the same time, McLaren are not dominating sessions with 1-2 finishes as they did previously. Piastri is visibly struggling, increasingly finding himself in brawls with the Mercedes and Ferrari’s for the top 5.<\/p>\n Because of this, Red Bull<\/a> and Verstappen<\/a> will keep some optimism about their Championship hopes. As long as at least one McLaren is off the pace, there will be a chance for the RB21 to pick up the pieces and stay within touching distance in the standings.<\/p>\n With only five races left this year, Piastri will be eager to find solutions to his slump as soon as possible.<\/p>\n Main photo: James Sutton\/LAT Images (McLaren media gallery)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" All eyes will be on Lando Norris heading into Turn 1, with the British driver in a unique position to retake the Championship leader. Only a few months after his catastrophic mechanical failure in Zandvoort, Norris has the chance to re-take the initiative. On the opposite side of the garage, Oscar Piastri has watched his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4927,"featured_media":37756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2452,66,1569],"class_list":["post-37753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","category-news","tag-f1-2025-season","tag-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri"],"modified_by":"Jaden Diaz-Ndisang","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37753"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37758,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37753\/revisions\/37758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2025\/10\/2243224496-1024x704.jpg\")
Stella points to areas where Oscar Piastri must improve<\/h2>\n
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McLaren take positives and negatives from Mexico qualifying<\/h4>\n