Jolyon Palmer concerned for Oscar Piastri after seeing Lance Stroll outperform him in vital area

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Jolyon Palmer has shared a major ‘concern’ for Oscar Piastri in his hopes of securing a maiden F1 title in the final four races of the year, highlighting one area that saw Lance Stroll outperform the McLaren driver.

Piastri’s championship challenge has unravelled after taking a relatively commanding 34-point lead following the Dutch GP in August.

He now finds himself chasing his McLaren teammate Lando Norris in the F1 standings. The British driver holds a fragile one-point lead in the championship, but recent form indicates that the advantage may be a bit stronger than it currently appears to be.

After showing signs of being a stoic hero in the first half of the campaign, Piastri’s recent results have shown he is ‘human’ after all, and he’ll need to find something within himself to turn his current rut around and put up a fight in the most crucial races of the ongoing title fight.

READ MORE: Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris told how Max Verstappen will ‘intimidate’ them at the Sao Paulo GP

Jolyon Palmer shares a major ‘concern’ for Oscar Piastri after analysing his Mexican GP data

Speaking on an episode of the F1 Nation podcast, former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer was asked about whether he feels the Australian’s recent Grand Prix results are as bad as they look on paper.

Palmer identified Piastri’s data at the most recent round of racing in Mexico as a prime example of the extent to which he is having difficulties against his now championship-leading teammate.

He said: “I do think it’s a struggle. I think when you’re six tenths away from your teammate in Mexico, it doesn’t matter where you’ve been the year before; that’s the biggest gap in the whole field in terms of a teammate comparison, and you’re the title rivals.

“Six-tenths in modern Formula 1 is a big gap. You’ve got Lando winning by 30 seconds, honestly cruising for a lot of the race, and Oscar, I know he got back to fifth, but think about the positions he gained.

“[Lewis] Hamilton got a penalty. That’s one extra position. [Kimi] Antonelli had a slow pit stop. That’s another extra position.

“And then he did an overtake on George Russell. It was a great overtake, I really enjoyed watching that one, but he still finished on merit behind Ollie Bearman.

“It’s a salvage, which is as good as you can get on a bad day, and you take the luck or you take the overtake, it doesn’t matter. The points are the points, but the performance will be a concern, I think, for him.”

READ MORE: Damon Hill feels there’s only one possible ‘explanation’ for Oscar Piastri losing his way at McLaren

Lance Stroll’s gap to Fernando Alonso in Mexico City GP qualifying was smaller than Oscar Piastri’s to Lando Norris

As highlighted by Palmer, Piastri’s deficit to Norris in qualifying for the Mexico City GP was the largest out of all of the teammate pairings on the grid.

Even Stroll, who has struggled enormously in the qualifying head-to-head with Fernando Alonso, managed to put in a time which was closer in comparison to his Aston Martin teammate.

Over the three years that the Canadian has spent alongside the two-time F1 champion at the Silverstone-based constructor, he has outqualified Alonso on just eight occasions.

In comparison, the Spaniard has outqualified him 58 times during the same time frame, including a clean sweep so far this season.

The 27-year-old is widely considered to be one of the poorest drivers in terms of racing ability on the grid, with one former Aston Martin insider highlighting how Stroll is the only current driver to treat his F1 seat as a job, rather than a ‘calling’.

Damon Hill was critical of Piastri after his qualifying performance in Mexico. It was the 24-year-old’s second-worst qualifying performance of the year, beaten only by his P9 grid slot in Baku, which was a result of a shunt in the early stages of Q3.

If he does want to realise his dream of securing a maiden world title in the sport, it is crucial that Piastri arrives at the final four race weekends of the season with the kind of pace that will put him in the same realm as his title rivals.