Piastri shrugs off Verstappen surge: “I’d still rather be where I am”
Oscar Piastri left Austin with the points lead still his, the questions louder, and the stance unchanged. McLaren’s title leader saw his cushion over team-mate Lando Norris trimmed to 14 points after a bruising United States Grand Prix weekend, while Max Verstappen ripped another 23 points out of the deficit across the Sprint and the race. The Dutchman’s late-season kick has been unmistakable — five straight top-two finishes and 64 points clawed back in recent rounds — but Piastri isn’t blinking.
“Not necessarily,” he said when asked if Verstappen’s charge is becoming a problem. “He’s obviously there and he’s quick, but the focus is working out why this weekend was tough and getting back to the form we had earlier in the season. If we can find that again, the results look after themselves.”
COTA was one of those weekends where nothing quite sat right for the papaya cars. Norris hustled a podium; Piastri wrestled the other MCL to fifth on Sunday. It wasn’t calamitous, just oddly flat compared to their early-year sharpness. And in a title fight that’s starting to feel like a three-car street brawl, flat weekends are expensive.
“Baku was a disaster for very different reasons, Singapore was what it was, and this one’s the odd one out compared to others,” Piastri said, hinting at a car-and-conditions mismatch rather than a wider trend. “Max and Red Bull have found a lot of pace since the summer break. We saw flashes of it at the start of the year, but it’s been consistent since Zandvoort.”
Verstappen’s form has dragged Red Bull back into the Constructors’ fight and put a spotlight on McLaren’s balancing act. Two drivers, one title lead, and a car that’s lived at the front for most of the season — it’s a luxury and a headache. The question doing the rounds in Austin’s media pen was simple: has the momentum shifted?
“Not really,” Piastri replied with a hint of a smirk. “I’d still rather be where I am than the other two.”
That’s more than bravado. With five rounds left, the Australian has the scoreboard on his side and the agency to fix what he feels McLaren left on the table in Texas. He’s not dressing it up — Austin wasn’t what he wanted or expected — but he sees it as a blip, not a trend. And he knows the math still favors the orange garage if they hit their marks.
“There’s a long way to go,” he said. “He’s chased it down pretty quick, but it’s not a small gap with five rounds to go. If we can find our pace again, things take care of themselves.”
The calendar now kicks up to altitude. Mexico City can be a strange lens for form — the thin air reshapes cooling windows, turbo maps and energy deployment. It’s also a place Verstappen knows well and where Red Bull traditionally tidies up the messy bits better than most. If McLaren’s COTA mismatch was about setup and track traits, this is a fast chance to prove it.
There’s also the human element. Title races are momentum machines. Drivers feel shifts, amplify them or smother them, and teams feed off the mood. Piastri’s tone was telling: calm, clipped, no drama. He didn’t bat away Verstappen’s speed, nor sugarcoat McLaren’s off-weekend. He just parked it in the “fixable” column and moved on.
That’s been his play all year: low noise, high conversion. The pressure now is different — the kind that lives in the margins — and Verstappen is exactly the driver to exploit any wobble. But Piastri’s counterpunch is straightforward: stop the small leaks and let the car do the talking again.
The championship picture remains a three-hander for now, Norris very much in the fight as McLaren’s metronome and Verstappen the closer gathering steam. The margins will keep moving. The narrative will keep swinging. Piastri, for his part, seems happy to let everyone else chase the plot twists while he defends the lead.
“I’d still rather be where I am,” he said again, and you believed him. Mexico will tell us if that confidence goes up a gear — or if the altitude brings the orange back down to earth.
