Lando Norris telemetry comparison exposes Oscar Piastri’s ‘incredibly aggressive’ problem

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Oscar Piastri finished 42.065 seconds behind Lando Norris in the 2025 F1 Mexico City Grand Prix, as his McLaren teammate won the race to also top the drivers’ standings.

Norris scored his sixth Grand Prix win of the 2025 F1 season so far last Sunday, as the Briton also converted his fifth pole position of the campaign. Piastri only secured a P5 result at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodgriguez, where he even qualified 0.588s slower than Norris in P8.

A five-place grid penalty for Williams ace Carlos Sainz promoted Piastri to P7 on the grid. Yet Piastri’s lack of pace in the Mexico City GP saw the Australian fail to overtake Haas ace Oliver Bearman, while Norris ran unchallenged to win by 30.324s over Ferrari racer Charles Leclerc.

Norris now tops the F1 drivers’ championship by a point over Piastri with only four rounds in Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to go. It is the first time that Norris has been atop the standings since Piastri went ahead after the third of his seven wins this term in Saudi Arabia.

Oscar Piastri’s Mexico City Grand Prix data showed he was ‘incredibly’ aggressive on the brakes

Norris produced a dominant race to win the Mexico City GP, and continued the 25-year-old’s streak of outscoring Piastri in each of the last five rounds. And Christian Danner believes the difference between the McLaren men in Mexico came down to their approaches to braking.

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While Norris chose a “cautious approach”, Danner thinks Piastri went the opposite way after comparing their telemetry from the Mexico City GP. He believes Piastri’s data proved he was “overdriving” his McLaren MCL39, as the 24-year-old was far too aggressive on the brakes.

Danner told Motorsport-Magazin: “These low-grip conditions suit Lando Norris extremely well, whereas Oscar Piastri often struggles. I overlaid the various graphs and looked at who brakes where and at what speed through the corners.

“One thing becomes very clear when you compare Piastri with Norris. Piastri drives incredibly aggressively, even under braking, and, in my opinion, it is just too much. He is perhaps a bit too fast entering the corners. That’s called overdriving the car.

“In Norris’ case, it was the opposite. He simply took a more cautious approach, and that’s what ultimately led to him coming out on top, and by a significant margin.”

Oscar Piastri’s struggles to adapt to low-grip circuits likely sparked his late braking mistake

Norris scored pole for the Mexico City GP with a 1:15.586 lap time in Q3, which was 0.262s faster than any other driver managed. Piastri only set a 1:16.174 in Q3 to qualify P8, before moving to P7 thanks to Sainz’s grid penalty carried over from the United States Grand Prix.

The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez’s low grip levels played a part in Piastri’s problems last week at the Mexico City GP. While Norris overcame the challenge, Piastri struggled to tweak his driving style to match the circuit’s demands, like he also struggled to do in Austin, Texas.

But Piastri trying to make up for the time he lost in the Mexico City GP owing to the low grip levels by braking late did not pay off. Now, the Melbourne native will travel to Brazil for the Sao Paulo Grand Prix on November 7-9 trailing Norris by one single point atop the standings.