Just a few short weeks ago, Oscar Piastri was the golden boy of Formula 1, cruising toward what looked like a comfortable and well-deserved World Championship. Today, he is a driver under siege, not just from his rivals, but seemingly from himself. The Australian wunderkind is experiencing the worst performance stretch of his F1 career at the absolute worst time, and his once-formidable championship lead is evaporating under the intense heat of a title fight.

What was once a commanding lead has shrunk to a perilous 14 points over his own McLaren teammate, Lando Norris, with the relentless Max Verstappen also closing in, just 40 points adrift. With five races left on the calendar, what should have been a coronation run has devolved into a desperate, three-way dogfight for the crown. The question on everyone’s lips in the paddock is simple: What has gone wrong for Oscar Piastri?

The answer, it seems, is a toxic cocktail of lost confidence, technical gremlins, and the crushing, suffocating pressure of a first-time championship battle.

The story of Piastri’s season is a tale of two halves. In the first nine races, he was untouchable. He stormed to five victories and secured four pole positions, exhibiting a dominant, commanding form that builds championship leads. He was the complete package: blisteringly fast, relentlessly consistent, and mentally unflappable. But in the ten races since that dominant streak, the magic has vanished. Piastri has managed only two wins and a single pole position, a stark decline that has thrown the doors wide open for his rivals.

The recent United States Grand Prix in Austin was a microcosm of his unravelling. The weekend was, to put it bluntly, a disaster. From the moment practice began, Piastri looked uncomfortable in the car. He was nearly three-tenths of a second slower than Norris in qualifying—a lifetime in F1 terms, especially between teammates who are normally separated by mere hundredths.

Things went from bad to worse in the sprint race. At the very first corner, Piastri was involved in a crash, ending his race prematurely and costing him valuable track time. It was a costly error, robbing him of laps that could have been used to build the confidence and rhythm he so clearly lacked. In the main Grand Prix, he was a shadow of his former self, struggling to a distant fifth-place finish while his rivals stood on the podium.

Worryingly, Piastri’s usual pattern of improving over a race weekend completely disappeared in Austin. He was slower than Norris in every single session, never finding the groove needed to be competitive. This suggests a problem far more fundamental than just an “off weekend.”

After qualifying, Piastri himself admitted his laps were “maybe not the best laps of my life” and that he was “strugging to get into a rhythm”. The Circuit of the Americas, a bumpy track that demands immense confidence with its mix of big braking zones and high-speed corners, seemed to expose his newfound vulnerability. If a driver doesn’t have total faith in the car, they will bleed time in multiple places, which is precisely what happened.

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella offered a telling, if polite, insight. He explained that lap time at Austin comes from taking the car to the absolute limit, “locking all four brakes,” and that if a driver lacks the confidence to do that, they will be significantly slower. Stella noted that Piastri was “missing the rhythm and confidence needed to lean on the limit”. This was a diplomatic way of saying the championship leader is struggling with the immense psychological strain of pushing an F1 car to its ragged edge when the stakes are at their absolute highest.

Technically, Piastri’s struggles appear linked to the McLaren’s notoriously “tricky front axle”. It’s an issue that can rob drivers of a consistent feeling from the front end, making it difficult to commit with confidence, especially through fast corners and over bumps. For most of the season, Piastri had managed this characteristic better than anyone, including Norris. But in Austin, the car’s underlying issues returned to haunt him, and he simply couldn’t find a way to drive around them as he had before.

Compounding this problem is a devastating blow from the team: McLaren has confirmed there will be no more upgrades for the car for the rest of the season. The well of development has run dry. This means Piastri is stuck with the current specification. He cannot wait for the team to engineer a solution; he must find a way to extract the most from the package he has.

This lack of development seems to be hurting Piastri more than his teammate. Some in the paddock suggest the current car setup inherently suits Norris’s driving style better. Norris is reportedly using a slightly different front suspension configuration, one aimed at providing a better feeling to cope with that tricky front end. While Piastri hadn’t felt the need to try this setup before, it could be the key differentiator that is helping Norris master challenging tracks like Austin.

Even if Piastri wanted to make changes now, time is against him. With only five races remaining, experimenting with setups is a massive risk when you’re trying to protect a dwindling championship lead. The sprint race format in Austin, with its single practice session, only exacerbated his problems, giving him no time to find his footing before being thrown into the fire of qualifying.

The media, sensing blood in the water, has begun to turn. Outlets are labeling Piastri “insecure,” suggesting that a “major flaw has been exposed” under the intense pressure of his first-ever Formula 1 title fight. It’s a cruel narrative, but one that is gaining traction. Piastri is learning how to handle this unique, all-consuming pressure in real-time, a brutal on-the-job training that both Norris and Verstappen have already experienced. In a championship fight, every minor mistake is magnified, and Piastri’s recent errors suggest he is feeling the immense weight of that leader’s target on his back.

Publicly, Piastri is trying to project calm, downplaying his performance drop as “no major concern” and insisting he just needs to “get back into his rhythm”. But the numbers tell a very different, and very alarming, story. A driver who won five of the first nine races doesn’t just suddenly forget how to drive. His struggles are so pronounced that McLaren management has been seen meticulously checking over his car after races, suggesting that even the team is baffled by where his performance has gone.

This brings us to the crucial Mexican Grand Prix. This race is no longer just another event; it is absolutely crucial for Oscar Piastri’s entire season. He must stop the bleeding. He needs to deliver a strong, confident performance to prove that Austin was an anomaly, not the beginning of a terminal collapse. If he can bounce back, the title is still very much within his grasp.

But if the struggles continue, if he loses more ground to Norris and Verstappen, the pressure will become unbearable. His championship lead could disappear entirely. On paper, the mathematics still favor Piastri. But mathematics don’t account for momentum and confidence, both of which are currently allied with his rivals. Verstappen has won three of the last four races, and Red Bull seems to be getting stronger. Norris is in the form of his life, closing the gap race by race.

The championship is now a test of Piastri’s character. He must adapt his driving to the car he has, finding solutions himself. Andrea Stella was clear: Piastri needs to improve how he “challenges the car in low grip conditions and over bumps”.

The next five races will be the ultimate trial by fire. They will determine whether Oscar Piastri has the mental fortitude to handle the pressure of a championship fight and overcome this crisis, or whether his lack of experience in this rarefied air will cost him what should have been a comfortable title win. Right now, the momentum is against him, his confidence appears to be missing, and the clock is ticking on his championship dream. Mexico is where he must make his stand.