Jacques villeneuve

Sao Paulo Grand Prix: Oscar Piastri’s mid-season slump in form has cost him the Formula 1 championship lead, and 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve believes the Australian’s recent struggles are a sign that he has already reached his peak performance level.

Speaking on Sky Sports’ The F1 Show ahead of the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, Villeneuve said Piastri’s inability to keep pace with his McLaren teammate Lando Norris in recent weeks stems from the fact that he was already performing at the limit earlier in the season. “We didn’t have an extremely fantastic Lando early in the season, not the Lando we had at the end of last year,” Villeneuve explained. “And we kept saying, ‘oh, that’s because Piastri has stepped up, he’s now on Lando’s pace and even quicker.’ But was it actually Piastri stepping up or Lando that just wasn’t on it? He kept saying he wasn’t very comfortable with the car. And maybe that made Piastri complacent a bit. When all you have to fight is your team-mate, maybe you don’t push to that last limit, that last tenth of a second.”

Piastri had appeared on course for a maiden Drivers’ Championship title when he won the Dutch Grand Prix in late August — his seventh win in 15 rounds — to move 34 points clear of Norris. But since then, the 24-year-old has failed to win in five consecutive races and hasn’t finished on the podium in the last four, allowing Norris to reclaim the championship lead with a dominant victory at the Mexico City Grand Prix.