Oscar Piastri’s title bid has gone from the pit wall to Parliament.
In a week when the championship needle twitched again, the McLaren driver found his name aired under the bright lights of Australia’s political chambers, with a local senator suggesting McLaren might be “biased against Oscar Piastri and costing him the world championship.” That chatter bounced its way to Abu Dhabi, where Piastri met it with the same calm he’s shown all season.
“It reached Parliament. That’s quite impressive,” he said on Thursday. “Regardless of why, it’s pretty cool in some ways. It shows the support from back home. I’ll try my best to bring it home for everyone.”
Bring it home, of course, is the tall order. Piastri rolls into Yas Marina in his third full season with an outsider’s shot at the big trophy, sitting third in the standings and needing the cards to fall his way. He trails Max Verstappen by four points and team-mate Lando Norris by a further 12 heading into the decider. Qatar didn’t help: Piastri finished second, but Verstappen won, and the missed opportunity in McLaren’s strategy calls left a faint sting. He hasn’t stood on the top step since Zandvoort at the end of August — proof of how narrow the margins have been.
If he needs a sliver of comfort, history offers one. The last two times three or more drivers arrived at the finale still in play — 2007 and 2010 — the one starting the weekend third in the table walked out champion. Kimi Räikkönen pinched it from Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso in ‘07; Sebastian Vettel mugged Alonso and Mark Webber in 2010. Webber, now Piastri’s manager, knows the feeling from the other side of the glass.
“Nice stat,” Piastri smiled. “But just because it happened before doesn’t mean it will again. It gives me the tiniest bit of comfort that it’s possible — that’s it.”
And no, he’s not chasing a poetic settling of old scores on Webber’s behalf. “I’m trying to do it for myself,” he said. “We’re selfish as drivers; it’s our job on the line in the car. I’m sure Mark would love to see me win, but there’s no thought of retribution.”
Inside the McLaren garage, the question everyone keeps tiptoeing around is team orders. The team has avoided them so long as both drivers are in range, and Norris — who leads the pair into the weekend — isn’t banging the table for help.
“Not been discussed,” he said. “Honestly, I would love it, but I’m not going to ask for it. It has to be up to Oscar. If it were the other way around, I think I would help — that’s just how I am — but I don’t think it’s a fair question to ask. If Max wins, congrats to him. It doesn’t change my life.”
Norris’s stance tracks with the culture McLaren have built over the last two seasons: let the drivers race, trust the maths, and tidy up the execution. That approach has taken a skeletal rebuild and turned it into a sustained title push. It’s also created the most watchable intra-team duel on the grid — often tight, occasionally tense, and nearly always fast.
For Piastri, the path to an Australian world champion — only the third ever, after Sir Jack Brabham and Alan Jones — is simple to describe and far harder to execute: he must beat both protagonists on Sunday and hope the right dominoes topple behind him. The car has the pace; the McLaren has lived at the front since the spring and tends to sweet-spot at this circuit. The driver is unflappable; even after the Qatar miscue he rallied to P2 with zero drama. It’s the luck he can’t control.
And then there’s the noise from home. Piastri hasn’t been back to Australia since Melbourne in March, but his stock has soared across 22 rounds of measured aggression and quietly lethal racecraft. If a line in a Senate hearing added a little extra heat to an already boiling finale, he’s not taking the bait.
The mood on Thursday in Yas was clear: take the win if it’s there, keep the points game clean, and let the stopwatch do the talking. If that’s enough to flip the script, history will happily be cited after the fact. If not, Piastri’s season will still read like a statement: a 24-year-old who made a title fight look routine and a team that’s one clean weekend away from ending a drought that stretches back to 2008.
Politics might love a narrative. Formula 1, as ever, prefers a chequered flag.
