Jos Verstappen, father of four-time world champion Max Verstappen, has told Oscar Piastri to ‘put his foot down’ to avoid suffering significant reputational damage. The 53-year-old described the Australian’s dip in form as ‘strange’.
Piastri stretched his World Championship advantage to 34 points with his seventh Grand Prix victory of the season in Zandvoort after the summer break, but since then, the tide has turned, and the 24-year-old is now struggling to find his way onto the podium, let alone fight for wins.
Heading into Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix, the Melbourne-born star has been outscored by title rivals Lando Norris and Verstappen in each of the last five race weekends. His team-mate’s dominant win in Mexico City dethroned Piastri from the top of the Drivers’ Championship standings.
According to Verstappen Snr, Piastri and his manager, Mark Webber, need to take drastic measures to avoid watching his title charge crumble. “I find it quite strange what’s happening at McLaren,” he told De Telegraaf.
“Surely Piastri hasn’t suddenly forgotten how to drive? If I were him or his manager, I’d definitely put my foot down internally. Because now everyone’s wondering if he can handle the pressure. And that’s not good for your own reputation, Piastri’s in this case.”
The Dutchman stopped short of suggesting that something nefarious was at play. “It might automatically smell like that, but I have no insight into it,” he continued. “But if I were Piastri, I would be fighting back now. Everyone assumed he would become champion, and that perception has changed very quickly.”
According to 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve, there may not be an immediate fix available for Piastri. Instead, the Canadian racing legend reasoned that the Australian may be at the peak of his abilities, while Norris has improved throughout the 2025 campaign.
“We didn’t have an extremely fantastic Lando early in the season, not the Lando we had at the end of last year,” Villeneuve explained on Sky Sports’ The F1 Show. “And we kept saying, ‘Oh, that’s because Piastri has stepped up, he’s now on Lando’s pace and even quicker.’
“But was it actually Piastri stepping up or Lando that just wasn’t on it? He kept saying he wasn’t very comfortable with the car. And maybe that made Piastri complacent a bit. When all you have to fight is your team-mate, maybe you don’t push to that last limit, that last tenth of a second.
“Suddenly, we get Baku, and we get Max winning everything. And Lando stepped up. Lando is driving faster and better than he’s been all season. Piastri is not stepping up. He was already at his limit. And when you do that, when you have to go that extra two-tenths, and suddenly, you find problems in the cars that did not exist.”
