Villeneuve on Piastri’s Baku bruiser: bubble burst, Verstappen back in the hunt
Jacques Villeneuve doesn’t buy the idea that Oscar Piastri is bulletproof. Not after Baku. The 1997 world champion says McLaren’s title leader looked rattled all weekend in Azerbaijan, and that’s exactly the kind of opening Max Verstappen lives for.
Piastri’s first truly messy outing of the year – a crash in qualifying, then another on lap one – handed Red Bull the momentum they’ve been chasing. Verstappen has stitched together back-to-back wins and chopped the gap from 104 to 69 points, the kind of swing that makes pit walls sit up straighter. The RB21 looks calmer now; the McLaren garage, less so.
“Azerbaijan has actually kept or put Verstappen in the hunt,” Villeneuve said. “Verstappen doesn’t crack under pressure and he will put an extreme amount of pressure on the two McLaren drivers and the team.”
That pressure was already visible in Baku. Piastri, usually ice-cold, was anything but. He brushed walls, missed marks, and misread the grip – a cascading set of errors unusual for him. The Canadian saw a driver right on the limit and tipping over it.
“You could tell that Piastri was on the edge all weekend,” Villeneuve added. “His driving was erratic from Friday onwards: the mistake in qualifying, the mistake on the grid, followed by a mistake right away on the first lap. He wasn’t in it.”
McLaren’s weekend as a whole never found a rhythm. Lando Norris avoided the barriers but never really lit it up either. There was no grand salvage act when the door cracked open. No late charge. No sting. “There was no sparkle particularly from Norris all weekend,” Villeneuve said. “His mistakes were less costly because he didn’t hit the wall, but he should have qualified at least P2. Then he just went a little bit wide, messed up and then had a lacklustre race.”
Now comes the part that really matters for a title fight: the response. One bad weekend doesn’t define a season – champions have clangers too, as Villeneuve was quick to note – but it can expose how a team and driver operate under the glare.
“Piastri’s crash showed that his bubble there was a bit burst,” he said. “Is it a one-off? Everyone can have a moment of down like this. It doesn’t matter how strong you are. Even Max has had some weekends where we’re like, OK, maybe that one was a little over the top!”
The difference, traditionally, is what follows. Verstappen’s hallmark has been the lack of aftershock: a clean reset, no fuss, no bleed through to the next round. That’s where the comparison gets interesting for Piastri, who’s built his 2025 campaign on ruthless consistency and quiet execution. In Baku, with a healthy points lead, the hunted felt like the hunted – and drove like it.
Being championship leader is lonely in a different way. Every decision gets heavier; every error feels like it drags a swarm of rivals closer. Villeneuve framed it bluntly: “Being the hunted, being the prey is a very difficult pressure to carry.”
McLaren have carried it well for most of the year, but the Azerbaijan weekend was their sloppiest of the last two seasons. Strategy didn’t sparkle. Track evolution kept catching them out. The drivers were on the back foot, then tripped over that foot. If you’re Red Bull, you don’t need a full-on meltdown to pounce; you just need a wobble.
The 69-point gap is still big, but it’s no longer a wall. It’s a ladder. Verstappen can see where it leads if the streak continues; Piastri can see how quickly it shrinks if he invites another rough Sunday. A title fight doesn’t need to be mathematically close to feel close. It needs one team rolling and the other asking questions of itself.
There’s a subplot here with Norris too. He didn’t take advantage when Piastri binned it, and that’s the sort of missed chance that lingers. Not because he’s out of it – the maths is still the maths – but because Verstappen is the one cashing in when McLaren falters. If the papaya car is the class of the field on most layouts, Red Bull are at least within striking distance often enough for Max to make hay.
Villeneuve’s critique wasn’t brutal, but it was sharp. He sees Piastri as the kind of driver who can compartmentalise and reset – “immovable,” in his words – and that’s exactly what he expects to see now. The first true championship test isn’t just the speed on Saturday. It’s how you drive on the Sunday after a Saturday that went wrong. How you absorb the bruise. How you silence the noise.
Verstappen? He’ll keep applying the squeeze. That much you can bank on. Red Bull smell the opportunity and, crucially, look stable again. McLaren’s job over the next run of races is to make Baku look like an outlier, a blot on an otherwise relentless campaign. Do that and Piastri keeps the upper hand. Don’t, and this title race stops being theoretical and starts getting very, very real.
