The Worrying Numbers Behind Oscar Piastri’s Collapse In Form.

Oskar Piastri's championship lead has crumbled. Less than two months ago he was sitting pretty with a 34 point lead over his teammate Lando Norris. Max Verstappen was nowhere to be seen, things were looking good. Fast forward to today he's not only lost his lead to his teammate but Max is just 35 points behind him with the momentum absolutely in the floor. So where? How has this happened and more importantly why so suddenly? Because today I want to look at this beyond the surface level, get into the weeds of the numbers and try and come up with an answer. This is how just four weekends have completely derailed Oskar Piastri's odds-on championship victory here. My name's Tom O, let's talk about it. Throughout the whole season I've been keeping a big Google Sheets spreadsheet of qualifying heads throughout the year. It's interesting information for my chinwags but also it's helpful for me to kind of get a method of comparing teammates over a lap that I feel was more relevant than just a basic head-to-head number because that never tells the full story. And we'll definitely be analysing those numbers today but first of all I think it's important to I guess kind of split the season up into good Oskar versus evil Oskar you know. When exactly did this self-titled sudden switch in form occur? Well his last win was round 15 in Zandvoort. Yes Lando Norris, his teammate, did retire in the end but Oskar was running ahead anyway. Oskar did a great job in Zandvoort and won that race fair and square. Round 16 in Monza, yes Piastri did finish behind both Max Verstappen and Lando Norris. Sure there were contentious team orders where Oskar was told to give back the position because of Lando's dodgy pit stop but at the end of the day I think it's fair to say Lando was probably the quicker driver on the day and certainly merited being ahead. It wasn't his fault the bad pit stop was a bad pit stop. I mean Piastri was quicker than Norris in Q2 for Monza and was only a 10th back in Q3 like that's okay. But then we come to round 17 in Azerbaijan because look Quali was up and down in Baku, he was about half a second off of Lando in Q1 but just 18 thousandths off in Q2, much closer. No drama, all good, just put a decent lap together in Q3 you'll be pretty close to Lando at minimum, jobs a goodun. But instead in those tricky slippery conditions changeable in Q3, he puts it in the wall. One mistake that kicks off a hell of a chain reaction. A P9 start on Sunday, a jump start on the Sunday, he's then at the back of the field desperate to make up places, carries way too much speed into turn five and once again puts it in the wall. Fair to say his first absolute howler of a race all season. Alright so let's take a deeper look into the stats starting with those first 16 rounds of the year. Prior to Baku his worst Grand Prix qualifying starting position all season was a single P4 in Miami, otherwise five poles, five P2s, five P3s. An absolute bastion of consistency and yeah the more reliable of the two McLaren drivers over that tenure because Lando may have bagged four pole positions himself in those first 16 weekends, however he found himself outside of the top three four times versus Oscars one. But look let's not get it twisted, it was close no doubt. In fact according to my big head-to-head qualifying spreadsheet on those first 16 weekends including sprint qualifyings as well the average gap was just 0.096 of a second in favour of Piastri a tenth and the match play head-to-head 11.8 in favour of Piastri. So then what does this information tell us? Look I think Lando's biggest strength actually is probably his one lap pace when he absolutely locks in and brings it all together and we saw exactly that on Saturday in Mexico didn't we? I would say when they're both on it Lando is a little bit quicker, only marginally I think he's maybe got a slight edge on Oscar over a lap but he has a mistake in him does Lando. In the first 16 rounds of the year he was more susceptible to making a bit of an error on a Saturday qualifying session than Oscar Piastri was and to be honest anything under a tenth is pretty marginal and I don't think you can glean too much from because you've got so many variables in actual real life qualifying. You've got wind, you've got track rubbering in, you've got traffic, you've got your team messing up when to send you out, you've got tyre prep, all of these factors, all these variables if you're averaging within a tenth you're basically the same. Or at least they were over the first 16 weekends of the season in qualifying. Now let's look at the most recent four. A P9 in Baku, a P3 in Singapore, a P3 in the Austin Sprint, a P6 in the Austin GP qualifying and then a P8 in Mexico. His average over those five qualifying sessions P5.8. He's averaging the first 19 over the first 16 weekends P2.105 and of course the bigger the sample size the better right but we are illustrating here how rapidly over a very short period of time Oscar's form over a lap has tanked because it's not only his teammate Lando taking advantage of this downtrend it's of course Max, it's George, it's Shaw and it's Lewis. They are all taking their spoils and hurting Oscar even more. So then head-to-head versus Lando in the most recent four weekends of course because of his crash in Q3 in Baku we can't look at that so I'm going to be generous to Oscar and we'll look at Q2 instead where Lando again was 18,000 quicker. In Singapore Oscar was 62,000 slower, 0.309 slower in Austin Sprint quali, 0.283 slower in Austin normal quali and finally 0.588 slower in Mexico Q3. That is an average of 0.252 advantage Lando Norris and a match play head-to-head 5-0. The only real outlier amongst those most recent four weekends is Singapore. Singapore actually wasn't that bad at all. Oscar nipped Lando in quali, their race pace was very close throughout the entire Grand Prix as far as I'm concerned and that Lando move was contentious but it's the kind of lap one move you get away with. It was only really contentious because of this papaya rules nonsense but other than that Oscar's just not been able to hang with Lando and the others in the top three is he? I think it's good to focus in on the one lap pace deficit because one lap pace is kind of everything in F1 right now. Remember what Jules Russell said after Austin it's a race to turn one that kind of does summarize where we are with these regulations right now. The FIA decided they weren't going to continue to clip the wings of the teams as the cars evolved from 22 to 23 to 24 to 25 which has allowed this unchecked dirty air to really manifest and spoil the wheel-to-wheel racing. We have amazing Saturdays, the best Saturdays I think we've ever had in the sport in terms of fuel spread, in terms of how close and unpredictable it is but it does really hurt the raciness we get to see on Sunday which is a shame given how promising things looked in 2022 didn't they when Shah and Max were scrapping at the start of the season it was that hang on we're onto something here and then they just let them innovate away any racing by creating loads of dirty air by generating loads of downforce which is annoying. A lot over the course of the season Oscar has five pole positions to his name, Max has seven, Lando has five as well, George two, Shah one. It's not like over a single lap Piastri has put himself head and shoulders above the rest and way quicker most weekends it is the consistency especially over those first 16 weekends of the year that allowed him to create this you know 34 point at its biggest advantage at the front. Max had his difficult mid-season slog, Lando was struggling with the car earlier in the year and making a bunch of unforced errors and let's not even get onto Mercedes and Ferrari because they are unpredictable as anything. 15 top three qualifiers in the first 16 GP qualifying weekends was insane consistency that allowed him to create this gap at the front and now that consistency is completely eluding him. So then is there a conspiracy because of course this is being talked at at length online right McLaren have clipped Oscar they're holding him back they want Lando to win blah blah blah that's the first big accusation out there which look for me I don't think you can look at what's going on this season and consistently be like yeah they're favoring Lando I just don't see it that way what's the old saying don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence and I think that's been the case of McLaren trying to manage things too much they've created their own problems and they've created these own narratives kind of themselves it is pretty much of their own doing but what I do more understand is looking at the entire season as a whole looking at those first 16 weekends and seeing how consistent he was and then seeing how inconsistent he is right now like how has that happened how has this car suddenly changed and you can't just tell me well it's because of these certain tracks because it's not like the first 16 weekends of the year have been all cookie cutter identical venues have they China, Bahrain, Saudi, Miami, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands all very very different tracks under very very different temperatures very different surfaces very different undulation very different requirements of your car yet Oscar's won Grand Prix around all of them this season why is he so bulletproof across that variety of tracks earlier in the year but then in Austin and Mexico he's absolutely nowhere Piastri and Stella have both indicated that it's a certain style of driving a certain approach that's maybe needed for these tracks specifically that Oscar is kind of missing from his arsenal of ability a weakness that is getting exposed but they have been very quiet to not go into too much detail about it which is understandable and we know McLaren introduced a change to Lando's car earlier in the year to the suspension to put it more within a window that he is happier with right not a performance upgrade just a confidence booster but the problem is that that was earlier on in the season we're four weekends from the end of the year and the end of this regulation cycle like I don't think Oscar's going to get any kind of change to the car if that would even help him by the way maybe this is just a blip maybe Austin and Mexico he just doesn't fancy it and actually we'll be backing into Lagos and he'll be flying and it is true that Oscar struggled around these tracks last year say Austin for example he finished p5 in the race Lando finished before in the race and p3 in the sprint and then Oscar was p8 in Mexico last time out whereas Lando got p2 looking ahead to Sao Paulo the next race coming up Oscar did put it on pole in sprint qualifying in the dry lost out to Lando in the sprint race but still finished p2 I mean Oscar should have won that race of course but he gave Lando the position because Lando was in a championship fight long shot fight so I get it I understood that in the rain on Sunday though both struggled p8 and p6 respectively but there are far too many variables in the rain you had a double alpine podium they're like nowhere at the minute so let's not read too much into that and actually you look at the remainder of the races this year compared to last year so both struggled in Vegas last time now Oscar won the sprint in Qatar and then he got punted by Max in Abu Dhabi from a pretty strong qualifying performance in Yas Marina so I do actually think when you look a little bit deeper there is reason to be optimistic that this rot won't continue and Oscar can find performance within himself the problem is that I don't know if that's going to be enough because as Oscar has struggled I also think that Lando's stepped up I have been very impressed with how he's turned things around seemingly last year a little nibble at a championship but again not a real fight as far as I'm concerned and this year started strong and then has been like a real slog hasn't it seemingly making too many mistakes to capitalise alongside a teammate with bulletproof consistency that is now struggling but wasn't for most of this season and look he said it himself if he keeps his head down right keeps the noise out and away he can deliver unbelievable laps right I think again that is his biggest asset I don't think he's amazing will to rule I've said that before I'll say that again but in this quali formula as it is Lando can make this work and when he locks in and really gets into that flow state that he was definitely in at Mexico both on Saturday and Sunday if he can do that for the next four weekends he's got this championship won he had a blinding start off the line in Mexico as well which has been an Achilles heel for far too long for him it's it's looking good for Norris right now Oscar needs to find something in himself he needs to get back to that consistency he was delivering at the start of the year but also needs to knock Norris off his perch a little bit and the elbows have got to come out at some point lads because Max is absolutely still a fact so now I've put a pinned comment in the comments below so check that one out who's winning this title Norris Verstappen Piastri cast your vote down there and let me know your thoughts and feelings below this championship is getting tweaked pleasure as always my name's Tomo thanks again have a good one