Sabotage? Please. Piastri’s McLaren dip looks a lot more human than that
A qualifying gap of almost six-tenths in Mexico lit the fuse. Oscar Piastri, baffled and blunt after Q3 — “just no pace… a bit of a mystery” — trailed Lando Norris again, and the conspiracy brigade hit the throttle. By Saturday evening, X was packed with armchair investigators insisting McLaren had put a thumb on the scale to help its homegrown star.
The timing made it juicy. Since McLaren tied up the Constructors’ title in Singapore, Piastri’s weekends have tilted scruffy. Austin was a struggle. Mexico brought more of the same. Damon Hill dropped a simple, telling line on X: “And Oscar… what the hell is going on there?”
Let’s rewind. In Austin, Piastri couldn’t quite unlock the car as Norris qualified up front and banked another big result on Sunday. The Australian salvaged what he could, but came away scratching his head. Mexico didn’t add clarity. Norris poled it with a 1:15.586, quick enough to edge the Ferraris. Piastri, nearly six-tenths back, was eighth. “It feels okay, just no pace,” he said. “We’ll have a look at where I was going wrong… obviously a bit frustrating.”
Cue the noise. A few fans saw patterns where there likely aren’t any, claiming McLaren had “done something to slow down or sabotage” the No. 81 car since Singapore. Others were less accusatory but still perplexed by the slide: not a smoking gun, but a shrug and a “this is a bit sus.”
Inside the garage, the answer is less cloak-and-dagger and more tyre and tarmac. Team principal Andrea Stella didn’t duck the question. In both Austin and Mexico, track temperatures spiked and grip fell away, putting a premium on hustling a sliding car. That’s Norris terrain — he lives on that low-grip edge, making time as the surface goes away. Piastri, Stella says, shines when there’s bite in the asphalt.
“The fastest car is also a car that needs to be driven in a certain way, especially with hot tarmac and sliding tyres,” Stella explained. “That comes relatively naturally for Lando and less naturally for Oscar. Oscar is more of a driver for high grip — that’s where he can exploit this incredible talent.”
It’s a neat explanation because it also fits the other recent breadcrumbs. This run didn’t begin post-Singapore. At Monza, the day turned controversial as McLaren managed its two cars and Piastri ended up behind Norris in the shuffle — not exactly the sign of a team soft-pedaling the Briton’s rival. Baku was uglier still: a qualifying crash, anti-stall off the line after a jumped start, and another crash as he tried to claw back positions. That’s not politics; that’s a bad day.
There’s also the very real point that Piastri is still early in the learning curve. Yes, he’s already a multiple polesitter and a title contender, which makes the recent delta sting. But he’s nearing the end of his third Formula 1 season. Norris is in his seventh. When the tyre is on a knife edge and the car is wriggling, experience matters. And a driver can only calibrate to those specific conditions by living through them.
“So nothing to worry,” Stella added. “It’s more a calibration exercise for Oscar. Every session he’s learning what you need to do and feel to be fast in these specific conditions… I’m sure this will pay off in the race and in future events with similar tyre and tarmac interaction.”
If you still fancy the sabotage angle, ask the obvious: why would a team jeopardize its own weekends by clipping one car’s wings? Especially when it has more to gain by having both drivers in the fight every Sunday. McLaren just banked the big trophy in Singapore. The most valuable currency now is points and track position — from both sides of the garage.
None of this means Piastri will be satisfied with “style mismatch” as a catch-all. Nor should he. Champions figure it out — they stretch their range and make the car work when it’s not mood lighting and candle scents. But for now, the story reads less like an inside job and more like a run of weekends that exposed a weak spot and a driver learning how to patch it up.
Norris put together a lap in Mexico he didn’t fully expect — “one of those where you don’t really know what happened” — and Piastri didn’t. That happens, even on title-chasing teams. The trick is what happens next.
Pressure? Sure. Pace? Still in the car. Sabotage? That belongs to the timeline where tinfoil hats are part of the uniform.
