The dream of a World Championship is a brutal, high-stakes battle fought not only on the asphalt but in the psychological depths of a driver’s mind. For Oscar Piastri, the charismatic young driver for McLaren, that dream is currently collapsing in the most dramatic fashion. What began as a commanding 34-point lead after the triumphant Dutch Grand Prix has evaporated into a fragile one-point deficit behind his teammate, Lando Norris, with just four decisive races remaining on the calendar.

This stunning reversal of fortune has ignited a furious debate across the Formula 1 world, centering on a question that goes beyond mere driving talent: Has McLaren, in the pressure cooker of a title fight, inadvertently or deliberately undermined their star driver?

The numbers from the recent Mexico City Grand Prix tell a story of brutal, undeniable disparity. While Lando Norris surged to victory, seizing the Championship lead for the first time since April, Piastri’s weekend was a painful exercise in underperformance. He qualified nearly six-tenths of a second slower than his teammate, was shuffled back to 11th on the opening lap, and finished a distant fifth, more than forty seconds behind the race winner.

The data confirms a significant and consistent performance gap between the two drivers across every session of the weekend. Telemetry data reportedly showed Norris finding cleaner lines through the crucial opening corners and building his advantage relentlessly each lap. The car, as Norris proved by winning, was fundamentally capable of taking maximum points. Piastri, however, just couldn’t access that peak performance, pointing to a driver struggling not with a mechanical flaw, but with a deeply rooted psychological obstacle.

The Smoking Gun: Team Orders and the Cost of Obedience

The speculation surrounding Piastri’s mental struggle cannot be separated from a highly controversial sequence of events involving team orders. On two separate, crucial championship race weekends—at Monza and then again at the United States Grand Prix—Piastri was asked to sacrifice his track position and yield to Lando Norris.

At Monza, following a frustratingly slow pit stop, Piastri was instructed to surrender second place to Norris. At the United States Grand Prix, the request was repeated: move aside for his teammate. While the team may have framed these instructions as a measure to improve the team’s overall championship chances, for Piastri, the message was immediate, unmistakable, and profoundly personal: his own position, his own title fight, was deemed secondary.

When a team asks a driver to move aside twice in quick succession during the climax of a World Championship battle, they are making a decisive, albeit covert, choice about who they ultimately want to win. McLaren can publicly maintain a stance of equal support and equal status, as Team Principal Andrea Stella has done repeatedly. But in the ultra-competitive, hyper-aware world of Formula 1, actions resonate far louder than corporate statements.

To Piastri, a driver who had built a 34-point lead on raw pace and consistency, the team’s instructions delivered a “powerful message” of doubt. And in a sport where milliseconds separate victory from defeat, doubt is, as the saying goes, poison.

The Scramble for ‘Mojo’ and the Weight of Insecurity

The psychological fallout from these decisions is perhaps the single greatest factor in Piastri’s recent dip in performance. When a driver is unsure if their team is fully behind them, their commitment to the absolute limit wavers. They second-guess strategy calls, hesitate in high-speed, critical moments, and lose the vital mental edge that separates a contender from a champion.

Guenther Steiner, the straight-talking former Team Principal of Haas, delivered an explosive, unvarnished truth bomb on the Red Flags podcast that has since dominated F1 headlines. Steiner provided a blunt assessment of Piastri’s recent struggles, yet he did not lay the blame at the feet of the Australian driver. Instead, he squarely pointed the finger at the team management.

“Oscar he doesn’t get support from the team to win the championship,” Steiner declared. He pinpointed the issue with devastating accuracy, noting, “You lose a little bit your mojo, you have doubts and you don’t perform.”

The use of the word mojo—that elusive combination of confidence, conviction, and mental flow—is a crucial insight. According to Steiner’s analysis, Piastri had that mojo in spades earlier in the season. As the ‘unofficial number two’ driver with no expectation of leading the charge, he could race with total freedom, building a momentum that stunned the paddock and unexpectedly put him in a commanding title position.

But the moment Piastri transitioned from a promising young star to a genuine, direct threat to the veteran Lando Norris, the team dynamics shifted. Steiner argued that the support and backing that had built Piastri’s early-season dominance suddenly began to swing toward the established man, costing Piastri the critical mental foundation upon which champions are built. “At the beginning of the season he had no pressure because he was number two in the team, obviously not officially… but again Lando is there a lot longer, he’s older, he’s got a lot more experience. Oscar comes up, wins races and puts himself in the position. Everything goes right.” The implication is devastatingly clear: the team was comfortable with Piastri’s success until it became a problem for their veteran favourite.

The Veteran’s Unspoken Advantage

To understand the subtle shifts in support, one must look at the innate culture of a Formula 1 team. Lando Norris has been with McLaren since 2019. Over six seasons, he has built deeply entrenched relationships within the organization, from the mechanics and strategists to the senior leadership. Piastri, for all his talent, is the newer arrival, joining in 2023.

In the high-stakes world of F1, these relationships matter immensely. They influence how strategy sessions are conducted, how resources—both mechanical and psychological—are allocated, and how split-second, pressurized decisions are made. It is a natural, human tendency for an organization to lean toward the driver they know better, trust implicitly, and have invested in for a longer period, especially when the title fight reaches its most intense phase.

But that human dynamic, however understandable, does not make it fair to the driver who has earned his position through unparalleled performance. It is this unspoken, often unintentional, favoritism that Steiner and others suggest has been the true catalyst for Piastri’s championship collapse.

McLaren’s Reckoning: The ‘Worst of Both Worlds’

Steiner’s public commentary has forced McLaren into a difficult position, compelling them to confront a debate they desperately wished to keep private. Is Piastri struggling under the weight of championship pressure, or is he struggling because his own team has subtly undermined his confidence? Steiner firmly believes it is the latter.

McLaren’s current approach, as the former team principal articulated, is “the worst of both worlds.” They are attempting to maintain the façade of neutrality while their actions—the team orders—tell a story of subtle but clear favoritism towards Norris. This strategy creates confusion, successfully undermines Piastri by injecting ‘poison’ into his confidence, and simultaneously fails to give Norris the full, undivided, and aggressive support that a declared number one driver would receive.

The final four races—Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi—are now less about a performance battle and more about a psychological and political struggle. For Piastri to turn this around, he needs more than blistering speed; he needs to find a way to rebuild the trust and confidence that the team has seemingly shattered. As Steiner concluded, that confidence is not an inherent trait; it is a foundation built on support, trust, and clear communication from the team.

This situation transcends the 2025 title. It reaches deep into Piastri’s future at McLaren. He is under contract, but no driver of his exceptional talent will consent to play a permanent supporting role. If the pattern of favoritism continues, Piastri will inevitably look elsewhere for a team that offers the genuine, unequivocal equal treatment he has earned.

McLaren has the opportunity to win their first Drivers’ Championship since Lewis Hamilton in 2008. But the manner in which they are pursuing it threatens to be a costly victory—one that could define a cynical team culture, damage driver morale, and ultimately alienate a generational talent. The decisions made in these final, defining races will not only crown a champion but also determine McLaren’s internal legacy for years to come.