Is calling the current championship leader the unluckiest driver on the F1 grid this season crazy?
Maybe, but here me out.
Going into round sixteen of the Formula 1 season, the Italian Grand Prix, Oscar Piastri sits thirty-four points ahead of Lando Norris in the championship fight. With the McLaren car heads and shoulders above the rest (they have won all but three races this season) and only eight races left after this week
Coming into this weekend, you could argue that Piastri is lucky, not unlucky. He gained twenty-five points over Norris in Zandvoort due to a car mechanical failure that only impacted Norris, not Piastri.
This has never been more apparent than this week when McLaren posted a video in which Lando and Oscar were asked to share their best moments in Formula 1.
There are a lot of memories that an F1 driver can call up in this moment – their F1 race, first podium, first win. Norris called up the
But for Oscar, all these milestones in his career have been tainted.
First race? Retired after thirteen laps in a back of the pack McLaren. Enough said.
First podium? Piastri started in second only to be passed by Norris and finishing in third, significantly behind his teammate. While certainly an achievement for his first year in the sport, the headlines were Red Bull securing the constructors championship and McLaren getting its first double podium since 2021. Piastri was an afterthought.
First win? Well, Oscar’s first win was a sprint win, which already is underwhelming. And it also happened to be the race in which Max Verstappen secured his third championship. The headlines consisted of lauding Verstappen’s perfect season, and debating whether Oscar’s win qualified as his first win, or whether sprint races didn’t count.
For those who don’t think it counted, Oscars real first win was in Hungary 2024, where a McLaren strategy debacle meant Norris undercut Piastri for the lead, and then only let Piastri pass after several laps of his race engineer pleading with him to do so. The overwhelming sense was that if Norris had been smarter and let Piastri through right away, Norris would have passed him on track for the win. Let’s just say the celebrations afterward were… awkward.
And McLaren’s 2024 constructor’s championship win? Piastri was tapped by Verstappen in the opening lap and watched from tenth as Norris brought it home for the team.
Don’t get me wrong – Oscar has had plenty of headlining moments of his own – his fantastic race in Baku in 2024, multiple fantastic passes on Norris for the leads of races, and his Grand Slam at the Dutch Grand Prix last week. But you can’t deny that Piastri hasn’t gotten his moment in the sun the same way other drivers have.
If Piastri does win the championship this year, no doubt some will consider Norris’s mechanical failure an asterisk, never mind the fact that Piastri has driven magnificently this year with minimal mistakes.