Oscar Piastri a potential victim of 'unconscious McLaren bias' towards Lando Norris

Oscar Piastri could have been the victim of "unconscious bias" from McLaren in his F1 title fight with team-mate Lando Norris last season.

That is the verdict of Marcin Budkowski, who spent seven years working at McLaren from 2007 to 2014 before joining the FIA, and then the Renault/Alpine operation, where he served as executive technical director.

Speaking on the RacingNews365 podcast, Budkowski was analysing the reasons for Piastri's championship demise that saw him open up a 34-point cushion over Norris, and a commanding 104-point bridge to Red Bull's Max Verstappen, following his seventh victory of the season in taking the chequered flag in the Dutch Grand Prix.

Following that, Piastri failed to win again, and managed only three additional podiums, en route to slipping to third in the drivers' standings at season's end, 13 points behind Norris and 11 adrift of Verstappen.

Budkowski feels there was "a combination" of factors that culminated in Piastri's demise, initially technical.

"Relating to track, grip, and the fact that his driving style is more or less adapted to some circuits, some track conditions, or the way he drives the car," said Budkowski.

"At the end of the day, it's always a mix between the actual driving style and the way to extract performance from the car."

Budkowski also suggested there "some mental aspects" to the collapse, describing it as "interesting", notably given the Azerbaijan GP weekend when Piastri crashed in both qualifying and the race.

"The first part of the season, we were marvelling at such a young driver being so strong mentally, no emotion, etcetera," he said.

"I don't want to say there were mental issues because I don't know it for a fact, but it feels like there was a mental element there, especially in Baku, with a spectacular mistake that wasn't typical of him, bad qualifying and the mistake during the race.

"That certainly didn't help his confidence."

'It can't be excluded'

The final point raised by Budkowski stems from a conversation he had with "someone from the Piastri camp just after the Qatar race".

It followed what he described as McLaren's "disaster strategy call" as it failed to adapt to the mandated two-stop plan due to the concerns over Pirelli's tyres.

"That cost Oscar what should have been a very, very dominant win from a very dominant weekend," said Budkowski.

"I'm not going to name that person, but we did have a long chat about the season, and they did say that they felt a bit like the McLaren camp had favoured Lando.

"And I said, 'You know what? I suspect that if I spoke to someone from Lando's camp, they would probably say that they felt there were some moments where the team favoured Oscar'. And he said, 'Yes, you're probably right'.

"I don't really believe that the team favoured Lando, at least not consciously or strategically, if you want."

Significantly, Budkowski then noted: "Whether there were some elements where Lando, who has been the wonder kid of the team for years, there was an unconscious kind of bias towards him, that can't be excluded.

"We all have our unconscious biases in various aspects of our lives, but I don't think it was a strategic decision. I don't think it was discussed, or it was conscious."