“Something mysterious happened” to Oscar Piastri claim made

Karun Chandhok has questioned what caused Oscar Piastri’s dramatic form drop-off in the final part of the 2025 F1 season.

Piastri led the world championship for 15 rounds and established himself as the clear title favourite by opening up a 34-point lead over McLaren teammate Lando Norris with nine races remaining, before a poor run derailed his challenge.

The Australian endured a run of six races without a podium and suffered a disastrous weekend in Azerbaijan where he crashed out of both qualifying and the grand prix, while Norris took command in the title race, and clinched his maiden world championship at the Abu Dhabi season finale.

Various theories have been offered for Piastri’s struggles, ranging from wild conspiracies to suggestions certain tracks didn’t suit his driving style.

The topic was analysed by Sky Sports F1 pundit and former driver Chandhok, who told the F1 Show Podcast: “Oscar led more laps than Lando, he won just as many races, he matched him 15-15 in qualifying, it shows how close they were.

“That’s a step forward compared to Oscar last year. So I think it is a bit of a coming of age for him. It was those three weekends; Austin, Mexico and Brazil - 46 points he lost in those three weekends.

“I think Baku was a weird one because it was clumsy. He was just as fast as Lando but it clumsy, nonsense stuff. Whereas from pure performance, those were three weekends where he was really lacking to Lando.

“If you look at the rest oft the season, they were nip and tuck one way or another. But something mysterious happened in those three weekends about his speed.

“Baku was a mess. Absolutely uncharacteristic errors, messy weekend and that dented his confidence. As a driver, psychologically, it was a bit of a snowball effect.

“I would love to know what happened. There’s theories around low grip surfaces and bumpy tracks but we went to low grip tracks like Saudi and China at the start of the season.

“We won’t get the answer now. Maybe in 10 years time have a beer with Oscar and ask him ‘what do you think happened in those three races?”

Key moments cost Piastri

Chandhok also pointed to a pair of “harsh” penalty calls that went against Piastri, who was hit with a 10-second time penalty for driving erratically during a Safety Car restart at Silverstone, and slapped with the same punishment in Brazil for his role in a three-car collision.

“I worked out that he lost 31 points, including disqualification in Vegas and Lando lost 36 points between the DNF and the disqualification, Oscar seven points for the Qatar strategy as well,” Chandhok said.

“Silverstone I felt was really harsh because the Safety Car turned the lights off really late. You watch back the onboards and I spoke to some drivers including George Russell, who was in that queue, and they thought he didn’t deserve that. I think he’s been on the wrong end of penalties on a couple of occasions.”

Chandhok added: “I’m interested to see what happens next year, because will Lando walk a bit taller, carry a bit more confidence with the number 1 on his car. Is he going to be a driver now who has a bit more of that inner self-belief and that might be harder for Oscar.

“Is Oscar going to be somewhat enraged that he didn’t win it this year and come back stronger. I’m fascinated to see.”