Baku bites: Stella backs Piastri after rough Azerbaijan weekend, Schumacher comparison in tow
Street tracks have a way of turning champions-in-waiting into students overnight. Oscar Piastri learned that the hard way in Baku, and McLaren boss Andrea Stella insists that’s fine.
The championship leader arrived on the shores of the Caspian with a 31-point cushion over Lando Norris and left with his first DNF of 2025 and his first scoreless Sunday in 34 grands prix. The margin’s trimmed to 25, but there was no panic in orange.
“Uncharacteristic” was Stella’s word. The Italian, who’s worked with Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Räikkönen, framed Piastri’s Azerbaijan GP as one of those weekends even the greats endure: messy, punishing, but useful.
“Even the most dominant seasons have one event where the biggest takeaway is learning,” he said. “Oscar concentrated a lot of those moments into one weekend. It wasn’t for lack of speed or preparation. It happens, especially here.”
It started on Saturday, where Baku’s walls play gatekeeper to the brave. Piastri glanced one hard in qualifying and didn’t set a time in the final shoot-out, leaving him only ninth. Norris also kissed concrete but escaped with P7 and the lap to show for it.
Sunday didn’t wait to sting again. Piastri crept a fraction before the lights, tripped anti-stall and sank to the rear. The recovery was short-lived: in an aggressive move on Nico Hülkenberg he braked that touch too late, missed the grip window entirely and met the Turn 5 barrier. Car done. Afternoon over.
Stella saw two separate misreads rather than a driver cracking under a title spotlight. The start? “An excess of eagerness,” he said, the sort of over-excited reflex you see once, then file away forever. The lock-up? Same theme as qualifying: grip judged a hair too optimistically, with Baku’s margins handing out a swift penalty.
“If you slightly misjudge the limit here, you get heavily punished,” Stella added. “But one of Oscar’s greatest strengths is how quickly he processes a weekend like this and comes back stronger. It’s why he’s been so successful in every category.”
The shine came off Norris’ race, too—another slow stop scuppered his push—so McLaren escaped with bruised egos more than a championship swing. Useful, given Piastri’s bulletproof scoring run is now a line in the record book rather than an active streak.
Piastri didn’t reach for excuses. He didn’t hint at pressure. He didn’t try to pin it on feel or headspace. Just two errors, plain and simple.
“It was two simple mistakes from me,” he said. “Nothing really felt different this weekend, which almost makes it more frustrating. From start to finish it was too messy.”
The Australian’s candour matches Stella’s calm. The team principal has lived this movie with multiple world champions. Schumacher had them. Alonso had them. Räikkönen had them. In seasons that defined their legacies, there were still the odd Sundays where the notebook, not the trophy shelf, did the heavy lifting.
That’s the perspective McLaren carried out of Baku. P9 on the grid at a track that punishes impatience was never likely to yield a bounty anyway, Stella noted. The cost was more reputational than points-based, and the lesson plan was rich: reset the launch routine, read the surface better on out-laps, remember the appetite for risk early in a stint isn’t the same as mid-stint.
For all the drama, the standings tell a restrained story. Piastri’s lead remains healthy. His McLaren is fast. The team knows where it fumbled—on track with errors, in the pits on the other side of the garage—and why it shouldn’t define their season. If anything, it might sharpen it.
Title campaigns are built in the quiet reaction to days like these. In 51 laps, Baku turned the 2025 leader into the pupil again. The headmaster? The walls. The homework? Come back and make them look ordinary. Stella’s betting Piastri will. He’s seen this arc before.
