‘Only human’: Webber backs Piastri after brutal Baku as Verstappen turns the screw
For the first time this season, Oscar Piastri blinked.
McLaren’s championship leader endured a jagged, mistake-strewn Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend that looked nothing like the ice-calm execution we’ve come to expect. The qualifying crunch into the wall, the false start, the anti-stall, the Turn 5 kiss-of-death with the barrier—Baku gave no quarter, and Piastri paid for every misstep.
His manager, Mark Webber, isn’t hammering the panic button. Far from it. “He’s only human,” was the message Webber sent privately, according to fellow ex-Red Bull driver Robert Doornbos, who relayed the exchange on Ziggo Sport. Coming from a man who did his time in F1’s meat grinder and knows a title run from the inside, it landed like a reality check rather than a defence.
It’s worth unpacking how quickly it all spiraled. Qualifying was carnage—six red flags, a record—and Piastri was one of the culprits after sliding into the barriers in Q3. Ninth on the grid wasn’t disastrous, especially with Lando Norris only two spots up the road in seventh. But race day’s opening seconds detonated his recovery plan. A jump on the grid, a stop, anti-stall, last. That sort of mess takes a driver out of rhythm, and when you’re chasing in Baku’s concrete canyons, speed plus frustration is combustible. Turn 5 brought the full stop.
If the orange side of the paddock was having a nightmare, the other title player was wide awake. Max Verstappen banked back-to-back victories and sliced the gap to Piastri to 69 points with seven rounds to go—still a margin, but suddenly not a cushion. The reigning four-time World Champion has that ominous momentum smell, the one that tends to hang around when the calendar enters the stretch run. And while Norris remains in the frame, he left Baku without truly cashing in either, sitting 25 points behind his teammate.
Doornbos added an obvious but relevant footnote: Piastri’s experience. The Australian has looked unflappable for most of this campaign, but this is his first real title fight. You learn different lessons when the stakes change. Street tracks like Baku are ruthless teachers, and Piastri discovered just how thin the line is between aggression and overreach when you’re trying to turn a bad Saturday into a good Sunday.
None of which is to say the leader is rattled. “I’m not going to rule him [Verstappen] out, but I’m honestly not too concerned with that,” Piastri said afterwards. “I’m just trying to bounce back from this weekend and put in the best performances that I can. I know that if I get back to where I know I can be, then I’ll be more than okay, so that’s what I’m going to focus on.”
That’s the right tone. Titles aren’t won by deleting bad weekends; they’re won by making them small. And until Baku, Piastri’s season had the look of someone who knows how to turn 5s into 3s and 3s into 2s when the outright win isn’t there. The danger is when the snowball starts. Webber’s steady hand—he’s seen the full circus, from Red Bull highs to Monaco heartbreaks—will matter over the next two or three races.
McLaren, for its part, has to clean up a jittery operation that misfired on both cars at key moments in Baku. The pace is real; the execution wasn’t. That’s fixable. What’s less forgiving is the math if Verstappen keeps stacking wins. A 69-point lead can feel gigantic in June and flimsy in September. The Singapore weekend becomes a tell for all three: Piastri’s bounce-back, McLaren’s reset, and whether Red Bull are actually back in strike mode or just profiting from a rare orange wobble.
There’s also the Norris question. He’s been the shadow in this fight, quick enough to threaten but not always in the right place to hurt his teammate. If Baku is the weekend McLaren look back on as the title picture sharpening, it’s also the weekend Norris may regret not extracting more. Being 25 points down to your garage-mate with seven races left is an opportunity—but it’s also a shrinking window.
Webber’s “only human” line reads like cover, but it’s true enough. Champions-to-be don’t avoid bad Sundays; they get scar tissue from them and get faster. Piastri’s had his first real punch to the mouth this season. Now comes the interesting part.
