Who's to blame for Piastri being all but out of the title race? It's...Piastri

It’s not too often that you can simply and straightforwardly blame an F1 team for costing one of their drivers a race win, but that’s exactly what McLaren did on Sunday evening in Qatar.

Oscar Piastri had dominated the whole weekend, taking both pole positions on offer, winning the sprint at a canter and streaking away from Max Verstappen at the start of the grand prix.

What followed was the strategy blunder of the year, McLaren choosing to leave both of their cars out on track when the safety car emerged on lap 7, in the assumption that a number of other teams would do likewise. That assumption was incorrect.

Had they been right, Piastri and Lando Norris would’ve been up the road while Verstappen lost time cutting his way up through the field from (let’s say) 11th place, without the aid of blue flags, at a track where overtaking is tricky. In that situation, McLaren would’ve played things perfectly...but they completely misjudged the rest of the field’s intentions.

As it was, Verstappen cruised to victory and Piastri finished all the way down in...second place?

Hang on, all this mithering over Piastri losing one place, in one race, in a 24-race season? This is what people are rolling out questions about bias in the Australian Senate over? When Norris also lost a single place because of the decision? Yes, apparently.

Yep, Piastri's to blame not McLaren

Fortunately, there’s a much easier place to lay the blame for Piastri needing a miracle to take the title in Abu Dhabi. He screwed up too much.

Not his team, not some skulduggery on Norris’ side of the garage, not some kind of British driver bias from the team run by an American and an Italian. The man in the helmet.

Piastri would be joint-top of the championship standings now if he’d just kept his second place in Melbourne, instead of making a mistake in tricky conditions and sliding all the way back to ninth. Who knows what could’ve happened if he hadn’t crashed in qualifying in Azerbaijan, jump-started, then crashed again on the first lap of the race.

If he hadn’t been on a six-race run without a podium finish coming into Qatar, this – Piastri losing a net four points to the championship leader – wouldn’t matter one bit.

Hell, it’s only one week since a much more serious McLaren error cost Norris a further six points over his team-mate, and let Verstappen back into the title race at all when both of the team’s cars were disqualified in Las Vegas. In terms of team mistakes, Piastri actually comes out of the last two weeks in credit.

McLaren’s screwup made an already steep hill slightly steeper, yes. But it was Piastri who set off over the mountain path to begin with.

READ MORE: Papaya fools! McLaren have scared themselves into setting up a Max Verstappen title win

Related