It was supposed to be a comeback, a defiant strike back in a championship fight tightening with every turn. Instead, the Mexico Grand Prix became a living nightmare for Oscar Piastri, a race that fans will be dissecting with suspicion for weeks to come. As his McLaren teammate Lando Norris stood victorious on the podium, taking the championship lead by a single, agonizing point, Piastri was left to climb from his car in a bewildered daze. The narrative didn’t just flip; it was torn to shreds.

From a dominant championship leader, Piastri suddenly found himself in fifth place, his title hopes dangling by a thread. But this was no simple racing incident. This was a systematic unraveling. In the chaotic, dusty shadows of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, one thing became painfully clear: something is fundamentally wrong inside McLaren.

The internet ignited with accusations. Fans, watching one of the sport’s brightest talents suddenly extinguish, cried “sabotage.” Conspiracies lit up timelines, painting a dark picture of team politics and favoritism. Through it all, Piastri remained calm, at least on the surface. “It’s difficult to say, ultimately,” he said after the race, his voice steady but his eyes betraying a deeper turmoil. That measured response only hinted at the crisis unfolding behind the scenes, a crisis that goes far beyond one bad start.

The disaster began just seconds after the lights went out. Qualifying eighth, Piastri was bumped to a promising seventh on the grid after a penalty for Carlos Sainz. But in the frantic launch, Max Verstappen and George Russell swept wide, kicking up blinding clouds of dust and debris. Piastri, with nowhere to go, was swallowed by the chaos. His car lost all grip, forcing him into a desperate correction. By the time he regained control at Turn 3, he was 17th. His race was over before it began.

What followed was a long, grueling afternoon of staring at the gearboxes of slower cars. He fought, clawing his way past traffic when he could, but he was trapped. He was suffocated by the dirty air, unable to unleash the pace he knew the car possessed. “The car was pretty quick this weekend,” he admitted, a fact that only twisted the knife deeper. The problem wasn’t the car’s potential; it was his inability to unlock it.

And that is where this story shifts from a tale of bad luck to a shocking confession of a driver in crisis.

This wasn’t just about dust and track position. Piastri revealed that for the past several races, something fundamental has changed, leaving him fighting not just his rivals, but the very machine beneath him. “For some reason, the last couple of weekends has required a very different way of driving,” Piastri explained, his words landing with devastating weight. “What’s worked well for me in the last 19 races has needed something very different… and trying to wrap my head around why has been a bit of a struggle.”

This is the core of the crisis. The McLaren, in the heat of these recent events, has developed a specific handling characteristic: it slides. A lot. And this characteristic is creating a stark, terrifying divide between McLaren’s two drivers.

While Piastri struggles, his teammate is thriving. Lando Norris “dances with a sliding McLaren like it’s second nature.” Norris can control the car on the very edge, finding lap time where Piastri finds only frustration. This isn’t a flaw in Piastri; it’s a mismatch of philosophy. He is being forced to unlearn every instinct that made him a champion-in-waiting.

“I think driving the way I’ve had to drive these last couple of weekends is not particularly natural for me,” Piastri confessed, in the most shocking statement of the weekend. “So it’s been about trying to exploit as much as I can.” He is not driving; he is forcing it. He is a concert violinist being asked to play a death metal guitar.

The view from the pit wall only confirms this alarming disconnect. Team boss Andrea Stella, usually a bastion of calm engineering-speak, admitted the problem in plain terms. “In this regime, you have to drive the car in a way that adapts to the fact that the car slides a lot and can slide and produce lap time,” Stella said. Then came the kicker: “This is not necessarily the way in which Oscar feels naturally that he is producing lap time.”

Think about that. The very skill that defines a driver—their natural feel for the limit—is being negated by his own car. Stella praised Oscar’s efforts, noting that he was applying what he learned and had more competitive pace than in qualifying. But his praise was wrapped in a concession. “It’s a bit of a shame that he was not in condition to fully use this pace,” Stella lamented, “because we could not find the way to just get him out of traffic.”

This is the kind of coded language that fuels the fan conspiracies. It’s one thing to have a bad start. It’s another to see a lopsided weekend where one driver is 6/10ths faster in qualifying and wins the race by 30 seconds, while the other—a man who was leading the championship—disappears into mid-pack purgatory. Fans don’t just see a race result; they see a pattern. And right now, that pattern is terrifying for anyone cheering for Piastri.

Stella tried to quash the rumors of favoritism, stating that for the final four races, there is “no reason to think that one may favor one driver or the other.” But fans don’t believe words; they believe results. And the result in Mexico was a one-point swing that handed the championship lead to the other side of the garage.

Now, the stakes are impossibly high. With the Constructors’ Championship presumably secured, McLaren has officially taken the gloves off. The team has declared a “clean slate,” meaning no team orders, no buffers, and no holding back. It is Lando versus Oscar, Oscar versus Lando, in a straight fight to the finish. Four races remain. Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi. 116 points are still on the table.

If Piastri wants this title, he will have to take it. But can he? Or was Mexico the beginning of a deeper, more psychological unraveling?

In his quietest moments, Piastri’s inner fire remains. When pressed on how he plans to respond to this disaster, his answer was brutally simple: “Find some more pace and win some more races.” That is the champion’s mindset. But as the season hurdles toward its climax, Piastri isn’t just racing Norris anymore. He’s racing his own car, his own instincts, and the very philosophy of the team around him.

Only one thing will make Oscar Piastri happy now: taking back what was his. But the question burning in the paddock is whether the real Oscar will return in Brazil, or if Mexico has left a mark that even his talent can’t erase. McLaren may say the slate is clean, but for a driver suddenly at war with his own machine, the battle has only just begun.