Australian burger chain apologises for Oscar Piastri F1 form ‘curse’

An Australian burger chain has apologised for putting a “curse” on McLaren driver Oscar Piastri amid his ongoing F1 form slump.

The Grill’d burger chain offered free burgers for every time Piastri made the podium, but in the five events that have followed since the promotion, the Australian has failed to reach the rostrum.

Piastri has not finished in the top three since his last victory at the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, and has been on a disappointing run of form that has seen him fall 24 points behind McLaren teammate and title rival Lando Norris with three rounds remaining.

Grill’d apologised on social media to “everyone who believes in the ‘curse’” and has since changed the promotion, which runs through to mid-December, to when Piastri simply finishes a race.

“We never meant to create a burger so delicious it could change the course of F1 history,” they added.

Piastri crashing out of the sprint race at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix did little to quash talk of a ‘curse’, with one fan pleading with the chain to “please stop this promotion and give us some hope for the last three races” in a post on the company’s Facebook page.

Can Oscar Piastri rediscover form?

Piastri has seen what was a 34-point advantage after his victory at Zandvoort turn into a 24-point deficit to Norris just six race weekends later.

The form of the two McLaren drivers in recent months could not be more contrasting, with Norris claiming consecutive wins in Mexico City and Brazil to take control of the title race.

Mark Webber, who is Piastri’s manager, has offered insight into how he plans to help his driver regain his form.

“Well get him turned around,” Webber told Channel 4. “I don’t think he’s low on motivation, put it that way.

“He’s had a tough run but this is about character, fighting those deep motivations that you need at this point to come back and this is his third year in F1 so he needs to find that character to fight back.”

Despite Brazil ultimately proving to be another tough weekend for Piastri, McLaren felt his pace was “encouraging”.

"From a pace point of view, I think the pace was quite encouraging in the second and third stint," McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said.

"In the first stint Oscar was carrying some damage on the tyre that was locked and he was also kind of thinking that the stint would have been long, but in the second and the third stint I think the performance was good and just talking right now with Oscar, some of the adaptations that we talked about in these low grip conditions, I think he was able to execute them during the race.

"So I think we take away from this event encouraging indications from a performance point of view and race pace point of view, and then I think we head to circuits where the behaviour of the tyres should be more normal now, well in fairness we go to Vegas, I was already thinking about Qatar and Abu Dhabi, we go to Vegas.

"So in Vegas we will see, it could be a regime of its own, like it's been in the past with heavy amount of graining, so I think it will be a bit of a standalone race, but some good learning across these three races for Oscar and this makes us optimistic for the final three races."