Oscar Piastri’s Baku bite: title leader hits the wall as red flags rule qualifying
Oscar Piastri’s year of near-flawless Saturdays finally blinked. The McLaren driver — who hasn’t started outside the top three all season — found the Turn 3 wall in the closing minutes of Azerbaijan Grand Prix qualifying, triggering a record sixth red flag and leaving himself ninth on the grid.
It was a rough way to end what had looked like a salvage job in tricky conditions. Baku was cool and gusty, the kind of capricious street track cocktail that invites trouble. Plenty of drivers flirted with the limits; a few overstepped. Piastri, usually the guy who thread-the-needle best in 2025, was one of them this time.
“Yesterday was a bit of a struggle,” he admitted afterwards. “Today I felt much happier with the car and the job I was doing… just a bit difficult to get it all together. Ultimately, I think I tried a bit too hard in Turn 3. I haven’t actually looked at what I did differently, because I didn’t feel like I did that much differently, but a tiny bit can make a mess of it.”
No excuses, then — not even in a session that turned into a stop-start lottery. Piastri acknowledged the laundry list of variables: wind, a few spits of rain, cool temperatures, and tyres that didn’t behave quite as advertised.
“Having it this windy is very tough,” he said. “You add in the compounds — I think everyone expected the medium to be a good step better. In the end, I don’t really think it was… You add in wind, tyre uncertainty, a little bit of rain, cold conditions on a street track like this, and stuff is going to happen. I don’t know if I got a gust of wind. I don’t know. But I’ve never been one to blame it on something other than myself, and that’s what I’m going to stick with until I see something that tells me otherwise.”
This was the first real skid mark on what’s been a relentlessly consistent campaign from the championship leader. He hasn’t won everything, sure, but he’s lived on the podium and kept his Saturdays squeaky clean. Not today. The car snapped, the wall arrived, and Baku — as it tends to — reminded everyone that margins here are razor thin and unforgiving.
If there’s a silver lining for McLaren, it’s that Lando Norris could only drag the sister car to seventh. That limits the intra-team damage, though it won’t feel like much of a consolation inside Piastri’s helmet. “Potentially,” he said when asked if Norris’s position took the sting out. “I’m more disappointed than anything.”
Bigger picture, this weekend was supposed to be a shot at wrapping up the Constructors’ title early. The maths coming in suggested McLaren could clinch if one car won and the other finished no lower than third. That now looks like Sunday’s long shot rather than easy pickings — but it’s Baku, and Baku does chaos. You wouldn’t rule out a safety car or two, a strategic curveball, or the kind of opportunistic, elbows-out recovery drive Piastri’s already shown he can deliver.
That’s where the optimism creeps back in. With so many red flags, nobody banked much in the way of long-run data. The strategic picture is murky; tyre life is a mystery; the wind isn’t done. And McLaren, quick all year, still has race pace in its pocket.
“I mean, not many people have done long runs this weekend, so the strategy is kind of up in the air,” Piastri said. “That gives us opportunities. We’ll have to wait and see.”
He’ll need a clean start, a bit of patience, and the sort of opportunism that’s defined his rise. From ninth, the title leader’s Sunday just got a lot more interesting. Baku has a habit of punishing overreach and rewarding cool heads. Piastri’s taken the blame. Now he gets his chance to put it right.
