Cracks have appeared in Piastri’s composure. How he responds could decide the world title

The first surprise was that Oscar Piastri made a mistake. The second was how he reacted to it.

The Australian Formula 1 star saw a near-certain victory slide from his grasp in slippery conditions at last Sunday’s British Grand Prix, where a 10-second time penalty for what race stewards deemed “erratic braking” behind the safety car saw Piastri drop to second place behind McLaren teammate Lando Norris.

Oscar Piastri was clearly unhappy after a penalty cost him the chance to win the British Grand Prix.Credit: Getty Images

Norris – who qualified behind Piastri and never headed him on track prior to the Australian’s penalty – won his home grand prix for the first time to slice Piastri’s world championship margin to just eight points at the halfway point of F1’s 24-round season – a 14-point swing that could prove critical as the 2025 campaign boils down to an internal fight for the title.

No wonder Piastri was peeved.

“I’m not going to say much, I’ll get myself in trouble,” Piastri bristled in his post-race media debrief.

“Apparently you can’t brake behind the safety car any more.”

Piastri’s economy of words and exasperated body language was jarring for a driver who is typically so even-keeled to the point of being robotic. This one stung; Piastri’s breakout season has been built on a paucity of errors and emotional stability, his trump cards against Norris in the same machinery.

Was Piastri’s Silverstone reaction an early sign that there are cracks appearing in the 24-year-old’s demeanour as the biggest prize in world motorsport sits within touching distance? Did Norris out-scoring him on a weekend where he had the hometown hero covered for pace lead to a temporary loss of composure? And will the British Grand Prix prove to be a key inflection point before the season’s second half?

While we’ll need to wait until the upcoming back-to-back rounds in Belgium (July 27) and Hungary (August 3) to better assess the latter, what’s more explainable are the reasons for Piastri’s reaction and the context behind them, not the reaction itself.

“I deserved a lot more than what I got”

Piastri had played his cards perfectly at Silverstone as the capricious weather accentuated every stereotype about an English summer.

From second on the grid on a track still soaked from pre-race rain, Piastri harried pole-sitter and four-time reigning world champion Max Verstappen through the spray in the early laps before overtaking the Red Bull star on lap eight and bolting to a seven-second lead by lap 11, by which time Norris had passed Verstappen for second place.

Worsening rain saw the safety car deployed to neutralise the race, with Norris – who endured a slow pit stop – falling behind Verstappen before the race resumed three laps later, Piastri backing the pack up behind him as the safety car intervention ended before scampering away.

Half a lap later, when an unsighted Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls) ploughed into the back of Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), the safety car was called back into action, which proved crucial.

When racing resumed on lap 21, Piastri – caught by surprise by the safety car’s lights switching off late in the lap to indicate the race was set to re-start – braked hard to warm up his brakes for the resumption; behind him, Verstappen moved to his right to take evasive action, and the cars behind Verstappen scattered to avoid running into one another in the spray.

Race stewards immediately investigated the incident and Piastri – who was found to have braked from 218km/h to 52km/h – was deemed guilty of “clearly” breaching Article 55.15 of F1’s sporting regulations, which states: “From the point at which the lights on the [safety] car are turned out, drivers must proceed at a pace which involves no erratic acceleration or braking, nor any manoeuvre which is likely to endanger other drivers or impede the restarts.”

After Verstappen spun at the restart and dropped back to 10th, Norris sat behind his teammate in second place with both drivers needing one pit stop to complete the 52-lap distance; Piastri led until lap 40 when his final stop – where his car sat motionless for 10 seconds before his team could change tyres – handed Norris a lead he wouldn’t relinquish.

In a championship fight of such small margins – and for the fact Norris engineered a 14-point swing through nothing more than being the beneficiary of Piastri’s momentary misjudgment and poor fortune – Piastri’s mood was, in the moment, explainable.

Piastri congratulates Lando Norris after the Brit won his home grand prix for the first time.Credit: Getty Images

“I hit the brakes [and] at the same time I did that, the lights on the safety car went out, which was also extremely late,” he explained of the lap-21 restart.

“And then, obviously, I didn’t accelerate because I can control the pace from there. And, yeah, you saw the result. I didn’t do anything differently to my first restart – I didn’t go any slower.”

After a race in which he’d mastered the tricky conditions and muscled his way past Verstappen with authority, Piastri was in no mood to celebrate a 10th podium in 12 races this season.

“It obviously hurts at the moment,” he said afterwards.

“I know I deserved a lot more than what I got, I felt like I drove a really strong race. Ultimately, when you don’t get the result you think you deserve, it hurts – especially when it’s not in your control.”

A two-horse race for the title

Piastri’s post-race rancour is unlikely to linger; the Australian is far too practical for that, and the two-week break between Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps comes at an opportune time for a driver who, this time last year, was yet to win a Formula 1 race.

Fast-forward 12 months and Piastri has led the championship standings since round five in Saudi Arabia, his third victory of the season, coming on a weekend in which Norris crashed in qualifying and relinquished the advantage he’d held since winning the season-opener in Melbourne.

For the past seven rounds, Piastri’s margin over the rest has been as slim as three points (after Monaco, which Norris won), and peaked at 22 points after Norris ran into the back of Piastri and retired in Montreal – the only race this season where there hasn’t been at least one McLaren driver on the podium.

With Verstappen a championship contender in name only – the Dutchman recovered to fifth at Silverstone, but is now 69 points off the championship lead, nearly the equivalent of three race wins – the 2025 season is now a Piastri v Norris intra-team fight for the title, given the pace advantage McLaren’s MCL39 machine has over the rest, and the sweeping regulation changes set for 2026 that will act as a hard reset for the championship and see rival squads soon prioritise next season over this one.

It’s a set of circumstances that means small slip-ups – Piastri running wide and getting stuck in the wet grass in Australia, Norris’ Jeddah qualifying smash and his Canada collision with his teammate – carry big consequences for a team that hasn’t had a drivers’ world champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008.

Piastri’s Silverstone penalty wasn’t his first error of the season, and – given the stakes – isn’t likely to be his last, with both of McLaren’s drivers entering uncharted territory.

Momentum will ebb and flow. Norris bounced back after his Montreal gaffe to win the next two races – even if one of those victories was gift-wrapped by his teammate – and 2025 shapes as a season that will be determined by each driver’s worst days, not their best ones.

“The car was obviously mega, and giving myself credit, I feel like I did a good job today,” Piastri said.

“It just makes it more painful when you don’t win [but] it doesn’t change much for the championship. I feel like I did a good job today, I did what I needed to. That’s all I need. I’ll use the frustration to make sure I win some more races later.”

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