Oscar Piastri isn’t sulking. After a messy, very un-Piastri kind of Sunday in Baku, the McLaren driver cut a pragmatic figure: own it, bin it, move on.
The championship leader’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix unraveled before Turn 1. A rare jump start triggered anti-stall, dropped him to the back on launch, and minutes later a snatched brake sent the MCL39 sailing into the Turn 5 barriers. It ended his run of relentless neatness in one clumsy lap — and his day.
“I jumped the start, plain and simple,” he told DAZN. “I judged it wrong. A stupid mistake, obviously… The important thing is to turn the page and try to do better for the rest of the season.”
Baku had already been fraying at the edges for him. A late off at Turn 3 in qualifying left Piastri on the fifth row and playing catch-up. Coming from the driver who built his 2025 title campaign on unflappable execution — and who won here last year while absorbing heavy pressure from Charles Leclerc — it was jarringly off-script.
For the statisticians, the collateral was striking. Piastri’s 34-race points streak, which began at the 2024 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, is gone — the third-longest such run in F1 history. So too his finishing record: 44 races from Mexico City 2023 to Azerbaijan 2025, second only to Lewis Hamilton’s 48 (Britain 2018 to Bahrain 2020). His first retirement since his rookie season arrived with a thud and a broken front end.
The damage to the title fight? Manageable. Lando Norris could only salvage seventh, so the McLaren civil war tightened without swinging. A 31-point cushion became 25 with seven rounds left. There are 199 points still live across the remaining grands prix and three sprints, so the maths keeps plenty of names on the board — Piastri on 324, Norris 299, Max Verstappen 255, George Russell 212 and Charles Leclerc 165. Realistically, it’s still McLaren vs McLaren, but Piastri isn’t teeing up a two-horse narrative just yet.
“I’m not going to rule [Max] out,” he said. “But I’m honestly not too concerned with that. 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.”
There’s a cold comfort in the way Baku fell. When your closest rival only banks nine points, you can absorb a zero. What matters now is how quickly Piastri reverts to type — the tidy, incisive operator who’s defined the season and turned pressure moments into routine points hauls.
Next stop: Singapore. Norris won there last year with Piastri third, a reminder of how potent McLaren can be when the grip comes up and the walls close in. Expect a reset, and a sharper edge from the No. 81 garage.
Nobody wins a championship by being perfect for 24 races. They win it by making mistakes once, not twice. Piastri knows that. Baku was the one.
