OSCAR Piastri has the composure and the talent, not to mention the car, to land Australia’s first Formula One drivers’ world championship in 45 years – leaving his rivals floundering in pursuit.
Only McLaren team-mate Lando Norris appears to have the package to deliver a sustained challenge, but he, like four-time champion Max Vestappen, cannot match the 24-year-old Melburnian’s consistency or cool under pressure.
AFP Sport looks at three things we learned from Sunday’s incident-filled race at a sizzling Circuit de Catalunya:
Piastri leads McLaren surge
After being beaten by Norris in Monaco, Piastri returned to his best with a demonstration of concentration, composure and technical excellence.
His fifth win of the season, in nine races, lifted him 10 points ahead of the 25-year-old Briton, who has won twice, and meant he had scored as many wins already this season as Alan Jones did for Williams on his way to the title in 1980.
His fellow Melburnian, now 78, was 34 when he won the championship with a tough, no-nonsense and hard-fighting approach to his racing – not unlike aspects of Red Bull’s Vestappen – and total commitment.
Jones, an admirer of Piastri’s “old head on young shoulders”, last month suggested Norris lacked the mental toughness required to beat his team-mate and Verstappen’s aggression, praising his compatriot as having “the mental strength not to put up with that crap”.
It seemed Norris’s perfect weekend in Monte Carlo had rebuffed Jones’ comments and restored his mojo, but in Spain the studious Piastri was on top again in a tight contest, overshadowed by Verstappen’s red mist racing in the final laps.
“This weekend’s been exactly the kind of weekend I was looking for,“ said Piastri, whose two-tenths advantage for pole was the biggest this year.
“I don’t know if it’s my best, but certainly it’s been a strong one.”
Verstappen boils over
While Piastri studied and progressed, Verstappen fell into old habits that revealed he struggles with a temper as quick as his car.
His clashes with Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari and George Russell’s Mercedes came as a red mist engulfed him in the final laps after a Safety Car intervention.
His frustration with Red Bull’s decision to put him on hard tyres for the final five-laps sprint led to both collisions, but only the ramming of Russell on lap 64 of 66 was intentional.
He was universally condemned with 2016 champion Nico Rosberg suggesting he should have been ‘black flagged’ and disqualified.
His Red Bull team chief Christian Horner labelled Rosberg a “sensationalist” but Verstappen’s ‘mea culpa’ on Instagram on Monday, having declined to comment after the race, was more honest.
“Our tyre choice to the end and some moves after the safety car restart fuelled my frustration, leading to a move that was not right and shouldn’t have happened,“ he conceded.
However, as Russell pointed out, he lost points for Red Bull and added three to the eight on his superlicence, to leave him within one point of a ban.
Toothless front wing ruling
The weekend began amid speculation that a new rule restricting flexibility of the cars’ front wings might be a ‘game-changer’ but it had little or no effect.
Seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton, who finished a disgruntled sixth for Ferrari, extending a run of poor races, summed up when he said it was “a waste of everyone’s money – it’s changed nothing. Everyone’s wings still bend... They should have given it to charity.”
