I discover it onerous to imagine how the driving force who had 14 podiums and 7 wins within the first 16 races, is now having an actual battle with attaining even fifth place. Is it a case of Oscar Piastri feeling the strain and main to some actually expensive errors, or do the tracks actually differ that a lot all through the season? – Allegra

Piastri’s stoop in type since he gained the Dutch Grand Prix to take his seventh victory of the season in 15 races is certainly outstanding.

I truly requested him on media day in Las Vegas whether or not he knew what had been occurring, and this was his reply.

“Austin and Mexico had been fairly totally different to the opposite races that haven’t gone so efficiently,” he mentioned.

“There, there was a transparent tempo deficit and one thing fairly basic that simply wasn’t working.

“The opposite races have simply been a mixture of various issues going mistaken.

“Clearly, Baku (the place he crashed thrice and jumped the beginning) was what it was. Singapore from a efficiency standpoint truly was fairly strong, simply the race clearly did not pan out precisely how I needed.

“And even Brazil, the tempo was good at factors. The dash crash did not have a fantastic affect on the remainder of the weekend. There have been some issues ensuing from that that had been suboptimal for the remainder of the weekend.

“So from a tempo and efficiency perspective, Brazil was truly fairly good, it was simply that there have been a number of issues that occurred that meant the outcomes weren’t on the desk.

“There was a few races the place, sure, I wanted to do some head scratching and work out what was occurring, however the different races which were robust have simply been what some may say is a troublesome world of motorsport.”

That is a fairly good abstract of what is been occurring.

However there’s one other issue to keep in mind, in that Piastri is just not driving in isolation. He’s additionally being in comparison with his rivals, and specifically his team-mate.

There may be completely no query that, after a shaky begin to the season, Lando Norris has moved up a gear or two because the summer time break.

Norris himself says the upward pattern began earlier than that – and it appears it started with the introduction of a tweak to the entrance suspension geometry in Canada geared toward enabling him to higher really feel the entrance of the automotive on the restrict.

Up till the Dutch Grand Prix, the head-to-head qualifying stats between the McLaren drivers had been weighted in Piastri’s favour – however by way of pure tempo the margin was solely 0.099 seconds.

Since Monza, Piastri has out-qualified Norris solely as soon as, in Singapore, and the tempo hole is 0.226secs in Norris’ favour.

This has come about via onerous, centered work from Norris, as he defined in Las Vegas. It is now as much as Piastri to reply.