Damon Hill heard an Oscar Piastri radio message in Brazil that he never wants to hear from an F1 driver

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McLaren driver Oscar Piastri will want to put the Sao Paulo Grand Prix behind him as quickly as possible.

Oscar Piastri watched his closest championship rival, Lando Norris, complete a perfect weekend, winning both races and taking pole position in both qualifying sessions.

The more experienced of the two McLaren drivers has hit form at the perfect time, while Piastri deals with car set-up changes he’s not completely comfortable with.

One of the big talking points was the penalty picked up by the Australian, with Johnny Herbert admitting he never liked the rule that caught Piastri out.

Piastri could only come home in fifth, meaning Norris goes into the final three rounds of the drivers’ championship with a 24-point lead.

Damon Hill was reflecting on the Sao Paulo Grand Prix and the 24-year-old’s performance across the weekend.

The 1996 world champion admitted that he heard a radio message from Piastri that left him worried about his assertiveness within McLaren.

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Damon Hill worried by Oscar Piastri asking ‘What’s the plan’ during the Brazilian Grand Prix

Hill and Herbert were discussing the race weekend at Interlagos on the Stay on Track Podcast.

Hill said: “By 1999, my last year, it was starting to come in where the engineers started to say, we’re going to set up the car according to what we see on the data.

“And I remember thinking to myself, but what do I do? I thought, well, that’s the end of that then.”

Herbert asked: “And that was a fun part, actually, wasn’t it as well?”

Hill responded: “Yeah, it’d be great to get all the information, but the trouble is, you have Oscar Piastri in Brazil coming on the radio and going, ‘What’s the plan?’

“And you kind of think, he doesn’t even know what he wants, what do you want me to do?

“It’s not really a question that I want to hear coming from a racing driver.

“It’s not a criticism of Oscar, it’s a general observation about the sport.”

Herbert provided a counterpoint to Hill’s view and said: “But I get from an engineer’s point of view why they do what they do because they’re trying to almost get perfection.

“Unfortunately, perfection is not always a good thing for racing, but I still want the driver to have the driver element being more at the fore.”

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Oscar Piastri’s unbroadcast radio at the Mexico City Grand Prix shows the pressure he’s under

Piastri will know he needs three perfect weekends if he wants to become the first Australian Formula 1 world champion since Alan Jones in 1980.

Even if he wins all three Grand Prix and the Sprint Race in Qatar, Norris knows that a quartet of second-place finishes will secure him the title by a single point.

Piastri’s radio at the Mexico City Grand Prix highlighted the pressure he’s under to perform, falling silent when informed that he could only set the eighth-best time in Q3.

His failure to finish on the podium since the Italian Grand Prix has cost him, with Norris and Max Verstappen both hitting form at the perfect time.

Hill has told Mark Webber how he can help Piastri behind the scenes, but once he gets into the car, it’s down to him to extract the full potential of the MCL39.