Barely a month ago he declared Oscar Piastri would win the 2025 Formula One driver championship.
Now former Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner has pulled something of a handbrake turn following the Australian’s disappointing performance at the Mexico City Grand Prix.
With just two sprint races and four Grand Prix left in 2025, Piastri trails his McLaren teammate Lando Norris by a solitary point, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen 35 points further back and chasing hard after being more than 100 points off the pace at the end of August.
Asked if Verstappen was now a genuine chance of winning his fifth successive title in 2025, Steiner declared the Dutchman was his favourite, adding that rising tension and anxiety within McLaren will only fuel his late season surge.
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“Max’s best ally to win the championship is McLaren,” Steiner said on The Red Flags Podcast.
“The ‘papaya rules’ are for Max—if they keep fighting, they keep taking each other’s points.”
The 60-year-old Italian was also blunt about Piastri’s current run of disappointing results, most recently in Mexico last weekend.
“It was not good enough to be world champion, he’s struggling now,” Steiner declared.
“One of things I can conclude is perhaps Oscar doesn’t feel like he’s getting the full support of his team to win the championship, (when that happens) you lose a bit of your mojo, you have doubts and you don’t perform.”
So what’s changed for the driver who was dominating the championship race for much of 2025?
“At the beginning of the season Oscar had no pressure because he was number two in the team, unofficially obviously, Lando has been there longer, he’s older, he has lot more experience,” Steiner said.
“Oscar comes up, wins races, puts himself in the position, everything goes right.
“But then with all the papaya rules, ‘let him past, let him go, you go, I go, let Max go’, I think he lost a bit of confidence—in races and also in qualifying when you’re on your own.”
“If you start where he (Piastri) started in Mexico, you haven’t got a chance.”
Having said all that, Steiner added he hasn’t entirely given up on Piastri or McLaren just yet in 2025.
“Let’s wait until the next race in Brazil and see how strong McLaren is there.”
The 2025 Brazilian Formula One Grand Prix weekend begins on 7 November.