Formula 1 Q&A: Title battle between Norris, Piastri and Verstappen; Las Vegas and Sainz ruled out Albon at Williams

I find it hard to believe how a driver with 14 podium finishes and seven wins in the first 16 races is now facing a real fight for fifth place. Is it a case of Oscar Piastri feeling the pressure which has led to him making some really costly mistakes, or are the trajectories really very different throughout the season? -Allegra

Piastri’s decline in form since winning the Dutch Grand Prix to take his seventh win of the season in 15 races is truly remarkable.

I actually asked him at a media day in Las Vegas if he knew what was going on, and this was his answer.

“Austin and Mexico were very different from other races that didn’t go very well,” he said.

“There, there was a clear lack of speed and something very fundamental was not working.

“The other races were a combination of different things going wrong.

“Obviously Baku (where he crashed three times and jumped at the start) was what it was. Singapore from a performance point of view was actually very strong, but obviously the race didn’t go quite the way I wanted it to.

“And up until Brazil, the pace was good in the points. The race incident didn’t have a huge impact on the rest of the weekend. There were some things coming out of that that were sub-optimal for the rest of the weekend.

“So from a speed and performance point of view, Brazil were actually very good, but a lot of things happened which meant results were not on the table.

“There were some races where, yes, you needed to do a bit of puzzling and see what happens, but other races that were tough were just what some might say is the tough world of motorsport.”

That’s a pretty good summary of what’s going on.

But there is another factor to take into consideration: Piastri is not driving alone. He is also compared to his competitors, especially his teammate.

There is absolutely no doubt that after a shaky start to the season, Lando Norris has stepped up a notch or two since the summer break.

Norris himself says the upward trend began even earlier – and it appears to have begun with a tweak to Canada’s front suspension geometry aimed at enabling him to get a better feel for the front of the car at the limit.

Up until the Dutch Grand Prix, the head-to-head qualifying statistics between the two McLaren drivers favored Piastri – but in terms of pure speed the margin was just 0.099 seconds.

Since Monza, Piastri has bested Norris in qualifying only once, in Singapore, and the pace gap was 0.226 seconds to Norris.

This was achieved through the hard, focused work of Norris, as he demonstrated in Las Vegas. It is now up to Piastri to respond.