Oscar Piastri has lost 47 points through six crucial mistakes in F1 title battle with Lando Norris

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Oscar Piastri is on the back foot against Lando Norris and Max Verstappen for the F1 title at Abu Dhabi, further highlighting all of the times he’s lost points through his own individual errors during the season.

After leading the F1 standings for 15 out of the 23 race weekends that have been run so far, Oscar Piastri enters the season finale in Abu Dhabi with a 16-point deficit to Lando Norris.

The Australian took the lead of the drivers’ championship after the Saudi Arabian GP in April, before relinquishing it following his McLaren counterpart’s victory in Mexico City in October.

At the height of his 2025 championship challenge, Piastri enjoyed a 34-point lead over Norris. That came after the latter retired from the Dutch GP after the summer break with an engine issue.

Max Verstappen was 104 points behind the McLaren star at the time, an eye-opening stat that shows just how far Piastri has fallen.

• READ MORE: What McLaren will do with their Oscar Piastri champion t-shirts if he does not win the 2025 F1 title

Every mistake that could cost Oscar Piastri his first F1 world championship

Piastri’s first mistake of the season came at the inaugural race of the season in Melbourne. The Australian was running in second place for the majority of his home Grand Prix, but his race unravelled upon the arrival of rain.

The McLaren star slid off the track in the final sector on lap 44 and found himself momentarily beached on the exit of 13. He would recover the car, but only to ninth place at the chequered flag.

Piastri’s penalty at Silverstone also did him no favours. Despite it teetering on the harsh side of the stewards’ opinion, it was certainly avoidable.

He would concede the lead to Norris after being handed 10 seconds and finished the race behind his papaya counterpart.

Even though Piastri’s nightmare in Baku is considered his most high-profile mistake of the season, he may have only missed out on a maximum of four points in the grand scheme of things.

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The Australian fell to the back of the grid upon the drop of the lights, and with overtaking being notoriously difficult that day, it’s very doubtful that he would have been able to get past Norris if he had been able to complete the first lap unscathed.

After the woeful weekend in Azerbaijan, Piastri pulled off a swathe of mistakes to further put himself on the back foot in the title fight.

Deemed to be at fault for the incident in the Austin Sprint, he would add another six points to the tally that he’s missed out on.

Another six would be added for Piastri’s ‘unlucky’ off during the Sao Paulo Sprint, paired with a further eight points that he missed out on during that weekend’s Grand Prix.

It was another harsh penalty that led to his downfall in Sao Paulo, but at the same time, it was a very opportunistic overtaking attempt on Kimi Antonelli upon the safety car restart.

Piastri finished fifth on track, but that easily could have been second.

• READ MORE: Martin Brundle feels Oscar Piastri should be ‘alarmed’ after what he saw at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Oscar Piastri’s mistake at the Australian Grand Prix was his most costly mistake

The outlier in all of Piastri’s misfortunes during the current campaign was in fact the first mistake he made, at the Australian Grand Prix.

He ended up losing out on 16 points in total because of his late skirmish onto the grass, which, ironically, is the exact amount of points he currently trails Norris in the drivers’ championship.

It brings the full tally of his errors to 47 points, a crucial amount that would have seen him clinch the title at the previous round of racing in Qatar.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom during that race weekend in Melbourne, however. A few days after the race weekend, Piastri disclosed to McLaren engineers how ‘very powerful’ the MCL39 was, in an optimistic view of the season ahead.