‘Bang your fist’: Jos Verstappen urges Webber to turn up the heat as Piastri’s title bid wobbles
There was a moment in Zandvoort when it felt like Oscar Piastri had snapped the title race clean open. Lando Norris coasted to a halt late on, Piastri swept to the win, and the Australian walked out of Max Verstappen’s backyard 34 points clear of his teammate and in serene control.
Fast forward a few rounds, and that serenity’s gone. Norris reset with a crushing victory in Mexico, Piastri scraped only fifth, and we roll into Brazil with Norris back on top by a solitary point. Verstappen? Suddenly just 36 points off the summit and sniffing opportunity.
From the outside, Jos Verstappen has seen enough to raise an eyebrow. The father of the four-time world champion told De Telegraaf he finds McLaren’s recent swing “strange,” adding that Piastri “hasn’t suddenly forgotten how to drive.” In a pointed nudge toward the driver’s camp, he suggested this is the moment for Piastri’s manager Mark Webber to get loud.
“If I were him, or his manager, I would bang my fist on the table internally,” Jos said. “Because now everyone is wondering whether he can handle the pressure. And that’s not good for your own name, Piastri’s in this case.”
It’s not hard to see why Verstappen Sr. is prodding. Piastri’s mini-slump has invited familiar whispers about McLaren favouritism for Norris—whispers that tend to surface any time one driver builds momentum. Jos wasn’t keen to fuel that, saying he has “no insight” into the politics, but he didn’t mince words on what Piastri should do next: fight back.
That won’t be lost on Webber. The nine-time grand prix winner built a career on straight-talk and steel-spined self-preservation. At Red Bull he lived the sharp end of intra-team warfare; he knows how quickly a narrative can run away from a driver if you let it. Expect some gloves-off clarity behind closed doors.
McLaren, for their part, are trying to blunt the story before it grows legs. CEO Zak Brown has been unequivocal that the team won’t pick a favourite, even with the Drivers’ Championship in the balance. He invoked 2007 as the cautionary tale: two drivers tied on points and the title slipping to someone else.
“I want to make sure if we don’t win, he beats us, we don’t beat ourselves,” Brown said on the Beyond the Grid podcast, making it clear he’d sooner shake Verstappen’s hand than strangle one of his own title bids by decree. This is an outfit, he insists, that races on the front foot, not the rulebook.
There’s a cold logic to that. The cleanest path to both titles is keeping both orange cars at the sharp end—no slow-ups, no short-fuelling the second garage, no “after you, sir” team orders with a single point between them. And when your two drivers have largely played the team game to this point, it’s hard to argue they’ve done much wrong.
But racing’s human. Momentum matters. Confidence matters. And public perception—fair or otherwise—seeps into performance. Piastri’s recent stumbles have had the feel of a driver pressing too hard to arrest a slide, a few ragged edges where there were none mid-season. That’s where Webber’s voice carries. Sometimes the most valuable thing a manager can do is draw a hard line in the debrief, demand answers, and simplify the ask for his driver: protect the out-lap, sharpen the starts, pick your fights. Control the controllables.
The other variable is Verstappen, looming in third with the kind of relentless point-scoring that flips a two-horse tussle into a three-way knife fight. McLaren can promise impartiality until they’re papaya in the face; if the lead car trips over the sister car while Max is racking up podiums, nobody in Woking will sleep easy.
So what does “fight back” actually look like for Piastri? It’s not a radio rant. He doesn’t need the theatrics. It’s racecraft. It’s taking track position when it’s offered, backing himself in strategy windows, and being just enough of a nuisance on Norris’s out-laps to swing a pit cycle. You don’t win championships by asking nicely, and you don’t win them by assuming the next weekend will fix everything on its own.
Interlagos is an honest track for a reset. Low grip, quick decisions, plenty of ways to get creative on Sundays if you’re switched on. If Piastri’s pace is in the car—and it has been, all year—it won’t take much to flip the mood. If it isn’t, then the noise that Jos is calling for will only get louder.
For now, McLaren say they’ll let it run. No favourites. No meddling. Two drivers unleashed. That’s high-wire stuff with a title on the line—but it’s also why we watch.
