[Saba Sports News] In the middle of the 2025 F1 season, Oscar Piastri was once seen as the most promising driver for the championship. After taking his seventh victory of the season at the Dutch Grand Prix, he led his teammate Lando Norris by as much as 34 points on the standings, exhibiting stable performance and calm demeanor, seemingly on a steady path toward his first world championship. However, unexpectedly, Piastri has not won another race since his victory in the Dutch Grand Prix, and in the last nine races of the season, he only made it to the podium three times, ultimately dropping from first to third in the standings, trailing champion Norris by 13 points and Max Verstappen by 11 points.
Marcin Budkowski, former executive director of Alpine, believes that Piastri’s decline in the latter half of the season is not due to a single reason but rather a combination of multiple factors. He pointed out that the technical characteristics of the car, changes in track grip, and the driver’s own driving style can all impact a driver’s performance on different circuits. Piastri’s driving style is more suited to certain specific conditions, and on low-grip tracks, he was unable to extract the car’s performance as consistently as he did in the first half of the season.
In my view, beyond technical aspects, psychological factors may also have played a role. At the beginning of the season, many were astonished by Piastri’s youthful yet strong psychological resilience, showing little impact from pressure. However, once the championship battle intensified, the prolonged high-intensity psychological strain likely had a negative effect on Piastri.