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Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1. Piastri entered the weekend at Baku with a 31-point lead over McLaren teammate Lando Norris, but his run of 34 consecutive points finishes in races came to a crushing end as the Australian crashed out on the opening lap. It has only gone downhill from there for the Australian, who is now needing a miracle to run down Norris and while the Baku disaster is an obvious turning point in Piastri’s year, it is also easy to forget the team orders drama earlier in the month at Monza. Piastri had a chance to extend his championship lead at Monza and was tracking for a P2 finish before McLaren ordered him to let Norris go ahead. Norris had been running second for the majority of the race but a faulty wheel gun delayed his pit stop, seeing Piastri move ahead before later being requested to give back the position to his teammate and championship rival. Piastri was initially frustrated by the decision, responding on team radio that “we said a slow pit stop was part of racing”. “So I don’t really get what’s changed here, but if you really want me to do it then I’ll do it.” The Australian later accepted it was a fair decision when speaking to reporters after the race, but that didn’t stop it from being a topic of debate especially as Piastri’s championship lead dwindled. In fact, speaking on the F1’s own Beyond the Grid podcast, when reflecting on his struggles at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix Piastri suggested he was finding it hard to move past what happened at Monza as well. “Ultimately (it’s) a combination of quite a few things,” Piastri said on the podcast. “Obviously, the race before that was Monza, which I didn’t feel was a particularly great weekend from my own performance and there was obviously what happened with the pitstops. “But then also in Baku itself, Friday was tough, things weren’t working, I was overdriving, I wasn’t very happy with how I was driving and ultimately probably trying to make up for that a little bit on Saturday. “I think there was kind of some things in the lead-up, let’s say, that were maybe not the most helpful and then things that happened on the weekend. “We had an engine problem in FP1 that kind of unsettled things a bit, and then I was driving not that well. We were on C6 tyres that weekend, which are notoriously tricky to handle. There were just a lot of little things that eventually kind of added up.” Piastri, who now trails Norris by 24 points ahead of next week’s race in Las Vegas, went on to say Baku was the “perfect storm of quite a few things”, calling it “the worst weekend I’ve ever had in racing”. “There’s no beating around the bush, that was the worst weekend I’ve ever had in racing, but probably the most useful in some ways,” he said. “So, when you can start to look at things like that, normally that helps you out quite a lot. “(If) you look at some of the names that have had some pretty shocking weekends, or almost unbelievable weekends or races or moments in their career where things have gone wrong; it happens to anyone. “There’s not one person in racing that doesn’t have some kind of disastrous story of how a weekend went wrong for them. Looking at it from that perspective does help a lot, but you still need to learn the things you need to learn from weekends like that.” F1 TEAM SORRY AFTER STAFF MEMBER APPEARS TO ENCOURAGE LANDO BOOING Racing Bulls released a statement apologising after a video surfaced on social media appearing to show a team member giving a thumbs down as Lando Norris collected his winner’s trophy at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix. Norris was booed by spectators at last weekend’s race and the Racing Bulls employee appeared to be encouraging the behaviour, with a fellow worker pictured trying to put their arm down and stop them. In a statement, Racing Bulls said it was “aware” of the video and stressed “it doesn’t reflect our team’s values or the spirit of VCARB”. “The matter has been handled internally,” the statement added. “We believe in celebrating great racing and showing respect to every driver, team, and fan both on and off the track.” The crowd’s behaviour was later condemned, although Norris himself didn’t seem too fussed by it. “It’s one weekend at a time. I’m happy, I’m focused on myself,” Norris said. “I keep my head down, I ignore all of this, keep to myself. It’s working at the minute, so I’m happy.” Originally published as ‘Not the most helpful’: Piastri’s big team orders admission in McLaren title race reveal
