Jacques Villeneuve spots worrying ‘continuation’ for Oscar Piastri
Jacques Villeneuve has flagged a worrying 'continuation' trend for Oscar Piastri.
Jacques Villeneuve has pinpointed a worrying trend continuing for Oscar Piastri at the Mexico City Grand Prix.
Piastri had a difficult Friday practice as he lagged behind both his direct championship rivals on the short and long runs.
The Australian ended up 12th fastest and was 0.840 seconds off the pace set by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, while he was also adrift of teammate Lando Norris.
Piastri has led the world championships since taking over at the top of the drivers’ standings in Saudi Arabia, but his bid to win a maiden crown has stuttered of late.
He is now only 14 points clear of Norris, with a resurgent Verstappen also cutting his deficit down from 104 points to just 40 with five rounds remaining.
Piastri suffered his worst weekend of the season in Azerbaijan, where he crashed out of qualifying and the race, and Villeneuve believes he hasn’t recovered since.
“It’s a continuation for Oscar,” the 1997 world champion told Sky Sports F1. “We didn’t hear a lot of confidence.
“His driving has been messy since Baku, that can make a tenth or two difference, a little mistake here and there and it gets to your head.
"Seeing Max at the front, that’s going to eat him all evening.
“If you’re running and looking backwards, things go wrong and that’s what’s happening.”
Villeneuve added: “It might not be down to the car, the driver just needs to be a little bit tense behind the wheel and that’s it - it’s gone.
“He doesn’t feel the car anymore, doesn’t drive it smoothly, starts making mistakes. Then the set-up that usually works is no good.
“He just needs to get back into that relaxed place and he doesn’t seem to be into it.”
Piastri rues average first day in Mexico
Piastri admitted his soft tyre qualifying simulation lap was “pretty average”.
“I think the lap on softs on low fuel was pretty average, so I’m not surprised with the lap time,” he explained.
“We tried a lot of things. We will go through what worked, what didn’t. Overall it felt reasonable. See how we can tune it for tomorrow and try and make it a bit more consistent, hopefully.”
When asked if he understood his deficit to Norris last time out in the United States, where he struggled to a low-key fifth, Piastri replied: “There were a few things we identified from Austin.
“Obviously it was a pretty messy weekend as well. Plenty of things that we found, all small things but when you put them all together they add up.
"I think we've got a good handle on last week.”
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