Juan Pablo Montoya says Oscar Piastri’s steering proves that something has changed at McLaren

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Juan Pablo Montoya has analysed the telemetry of the two McLaren drivers after last weekend’s Mexico City GP. Lando Norris cruised to the most dominant victory of the 2025 season, while Oscar Piastri scrapped for fifth place.

Piastri’s last win in the Netherlands left him 34 points ahead of his teammate, who retired with a chassis problem. In five weekends since, he’s scored just 47 points, compared to 82 for his teammate.

That swing has put Norris at the top of the standings for the first time since the chequered flag in Bahrain, when the Briton had 77 points to Piastri’s 74.

McLaren have ruled out a chassis change for Piastri, but they are inspecting his MCL39 in depth. This indicates that the team are confused by his drop-off after 15 races of elite-level consistency.

Juan Pablo Montoya says McLaren’s car is now more suited to Lando Norris

Speaking on the ‘MontoyAS’ podcast, Montoya shared his findings after studying the two McLaren drivers. He says Piastri’s steering inputs are much smoother than his teammate’s.

But while Norris is having to make constant corrections through the corner, his ‘looser’ balance makes the MCL39 come alive. While Montoya insists McLaren haven’t developed their car to suit one driver in particular, they have seemingly altered its characteristics.

Norris’ ‘driving technique’ is currently extracting more lap time, so Piastri may be forced to make adjustments for the final four races.

In June, the British driver took on a front suspension upgrade that addressed his main gripe with the car. Piastri elected not to make the change, but this probably doesn’t explain their divergence, given that it’s only been a feature of recent events.

Montoya said: “The biggest difference is that Norris’s balance is much looser than Piastri’s, which is why he’s faster. And I think it’s because McLaren needed to make changes and be more aggressive in the qualifying setup because they have enough race speed, but if they don’t have the position on the grid, it’s useless.

“If you look at the telemetry of the steering wheel in the middle of the corner, when he turns the wheel, Oscar’s car doesn’t turn as much as Lando’s, and that’s what makes the difference. One turns faster than the other, but if you look at every time Lando turns, Lando turns and has to correct, correct, correct, and go, Oscar turns and waits.

“So they’re two different balances. That doesn’t mean that one is helping the other, that McLaren is helping one another. Each side of McLaren is focused on their driver winning. It’s not that McLaren said, ‘We’re going to change the car so that Lando goes fast and Oscar doesn’t.’

“It seems to me that in the laps where Lando really made time against Oscar, it was more about driving technique than anything else.”

Juan Pablo Montoya fears Lando Norris will now endure a slump at McLaren

Montoya felt McLaren had to go in a different direction because they weren’t optimising their car over a single lap. Verstappen took pole in three of the first six races and has only done so in four out of 14 since.

Some in the paddock think McLaren are favouring Norris, but Montoya says it simply comes down to the more experienced driver doing a ‘better job’.

The Colombian previously suggested that Piastri changed his approach after Zandvoort, tensing up as he tried to defend a commanding lead. He fears Norris may now squander his momentum by driving more conservatively after taking top spot.

“The car isn’t the same because they’re trying to go faster, or they could keep the car they had at the beginning of the year and right now they’d be qualifying sixth and eighth in every race and Max would be winning them,” he said.

“So, they had to react as a team. If they were winning races like they were before, they wouldn’t have changed anything, but they had to find more speed in the car, they had to be more aggressive, they had to make changes, and with the changes, Lando is more comfortable than Oscar. That’s the whole difference.

“So, the truth is that I don’t think there’s any controversy on McLaren’s part. I think Lando did a better job.

“What’s going to be interesting now is that we’re back to square one. Now Lando is finally leading the championship again, by one point, but he’s going to change his approach, and the same thing that happened to Oscar is going to happen to him.”