Piastri says he ‘has still got what it takes’ to win F1 crown

Oscar Piastri has offered a defiant response to critics who say he can not handle the pressure of the Formula One title battle, insisting: “I know I’ve still got what it takes to win the championship.”

The Australian’s championship lead stood at a substantial 34 points after his Dutch Grand Prix triumph in Zandvoort at the end of August.

However, it finally evaporated five races later as McLaren teammate Lando Norris’s runaway victory last time out in Mexico City moved him a point ahead in the title race.

The deterioration in the previously dominant Melburnian’s form, without a podium in his last four outings, has led to all sorts of barbs aimed at Piastri and the team, with former world champ Jacques Villeneuve labelling it a “total collapse”.

“It is due to the effect of the pressure when you have to step up. And you react differently,” Canada’s 1997 winner Villeneuve claimed, suggesting Piastri had not been the same driver since the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, when he crashed twice and jumped the start.

But as he prepared for the São Paulo Grand Prix on Thursday, Piastri dismissed the idea of a crisis of confidence.

“I mean, people can think what they want to think, right?” he told Sky Sports.

“But for me, I know that I’ve still got what it takes to win the championship. Yeah, there’s been some bumps along the road, but there’s been bumps along the road for everyone this year at different points.

“So I’m confident I’ve learned a lot of helpful things, from the last couple of weekends in particular. And I’m confident as well that I can still perform at some of the heights of success we’ve had this year.

“There’s still a lot of laps to go this year, and I’m very confident I can still win.”

Piastri has won seven races this term, looking an untouchable favourite at one point. 

Yet his underpowered performances in the two most recent races in Austin and Mexico City, while teammate Norris flourished, have looked alarming.

“Austin and Mexico have been kind of two races that have been different to a lot of others. There were clearly some things that were just requiring very different driving, for whatever reason. So I think those two are similar,” he said.

“But I don’t think any of the races before that were were bad or catastrophic. There were some mistakes here and there, but learning from the last two weekends has been important.”

The conspiracy theorists have also enjoyed floating the idea that McLaren have been favouring Norris in the run-in.

Even Jos Verstappen, father of Red Bull’s champion Max Verstappen who’s still on the charge in the championship race just 36 points adrift of Norris in third, has happily been stirring the pot, telling Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that Piastri and manager Mark Webber should “bang fists on tables” at McLaren over his treatment.

McLaren has said it would not favour either driver in the title run in, while Piastri shrugged off those claims.

“We can stand up for ourselves and I feel very comfortable doing that, and that’s very much encouraged by the team to kind of make our point for ourselves individually,” he said.

“I respect the team allowing us to both try and fight for the drivers’ championship. 

“I want to go out there and try and win the championship knowing I did it on my own merit and doing the things that I could do in my control … I don’t think anything needs to change.”

AAP