Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Circuit of the Americas, 2025

McLaren must continue backing both their drivers in the championship fight, said Oscar Piastri, as Max Verstappen cut their points lead again in Austin.

Verstappen won both races at the Circuit of the Americas and now lies just 40 points behind Piastri with five rounds remaining.

Lando Norris also cut Piastri’s points lead in Austin. The McLaren pair are separated by just 14 points at the top of the standings.

McLaren have supported both drivers in the championship fight so far this season but although Verstappen is now a serious threat Piastri said that shouldn’t change.

“We’re still so incredibly tight,” he told Sky. “We’ve both said we wanted an opportunity to try and fight for the championship because we deserve it. I think it’s far too close to start picking one over the other.”

Piastri endured a tough weekend in Austin. He and Norris crashed out at the start of yesterday’s sprint race. Norris recovered to take second in the grand prix but Piastri could only manage fifth place.

The championship leader said his priority will be “trying to work out why I just didn’t gel with the car this weekend.”

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“It was difficult to get into a rhythm at all and that’s been the big difference compared to other circuits that we’ve been to more recently,” he added.

There has usually been little to choose between the pair in qualifying this year but Piastri was almost three tenths of a second behind Norris in Austin which left him further back on the grid.

“I think that today race pace could have saved you, but I didn’t really have that either,” he admitted. “It’s something I want to work on obviously, but I think qualifying still generally has been consistently good.

“There’s obviously been the highs at certain points, but this weekend, apart from Baku, has really been the first weekend where it’s been a let-down. Even if it’s been sub-par before, it’s still been pretty good.

“So there’s some things to try and understand from this weekend because clearly it wasn’t just related to qualifying.”

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