Oscar Piastri highlights 'trend' during F1 form slump

Oscar Piastri has stated he has been enduring a “trend” of having to drive his McLaren car differently compared to the rest of the year at recent rounds.

The Australian held a comfortable 34-point lead after the Dutch Grand Prix earlier this season but has failed to outscore team-mate Lando Norris across a race weekend ever since.

Norris recently took hold of the title lead amid Piastri's slump in form, which has been particularly noticeable across the last three events.

Piastri detailed the decline is rooted in not being able to drive the car the same way as he did in the early stages of the campaign.

“The last three weekends in particular are a similar trend,” he told media including RacingNews365. 

“Austin, I had to drive very, very differently. Mexico, the same.

“It’s one thing adapting to different conditions, but when the way you’ve driven for the whole season has worked so well, it’s difficult to go away from that.

“There’s been a lot of learning on that side of things and trying to adapt to different things.

“I think [in Brazil], practice was really, really strong. It felt like I couldn’t go slow in practice. Then through the rest of the weekend, things just went away from us a bit more.

“The soft tyre was obviously behaving very strangely and it was hardly better than the medium.

“The grip conditions [on Saturday] were very bizarre. To not go any quicker from Q1 to Q3 is almost unheard of, especially after so much rain.”

Piastri now sits 24 points down on Norris with three rounds remaining and hopes to apply learnings to his recent struggles in order to keep his title hopes alive.

“Clearly something has been a bit odd,” he said. “The car’s been more or less the same. 

“We’ve been trying to put it in the same window, but just other factors have made things difficult.

“But I’m also trying to work on how I can adapt to that better and kind of add more tools to my arsenal.”