Oscar Piastri told he shares a ‘clever’ obsession with Nico Rosberg that helped him defeat Lewis Hamilton

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Oscar Piastri extended his championship lead to 34 points over Lando Norris at the Dutch Grand Prix, after a power unit-related failure for the Briton.

Norris was putting the pressure on Piastri in the closing stages of the race when he complained of smoke in the cockpit, only for him to be forced to stop his McLaren on track and retire.

This is the second retirement and non-points score of the season for Norris, in what could turn out to be a blow to his title chances, considering Piastri’s impressive consistency this season.

It was also a great turnaround for Piastri at Zandvoort, after the Australian was trailing Norris in practice but went quicker by one hundredth of a second in qualifying to steal pole.

Discussing how the Australian found the time on the F1 Nation podcast, former Alpine team boss Marcin Budkowski believes Piastri is obsessed with studying data.

Oscar Piastri obsessed with studying data to beat Lando Norris

There is nothing more valuable than data in F1, and drivers who can use it to their advantage often excel against their rivals.

Nico Rosberg once used a combination of video footage and data to beat Lewis Hamilton during their relentless title battles at Mercedes (via ESPN), and now Piastri is doing the same with Norris, according to Budkowski.

“Oscar spent the whole Friday and Saturday morning looking through the data, looking through the onboards, understanding where he was losing to Lando, understanding where he could improve on the corners that he was already quicker, and building up towards qualifying,” said Budkowski.

“In qualifying, there was nothing between them. When you look at the lap, you see that they come out of the last corner exactly in the same place. Had he finished his lap normally, it would have been the same time, maybe a thousandth [of a second] difference.

“The difference is he caught a small tow from the Racing Bull, and that gave him the hundredth of a second difference. But these guys ended up basically at the same exact level in qualifying, while Oscar was trailing by a quarter of a second most of the weekend.

“So by being clever, not panicking, just looking at the data and working, he managed to make that disadvantage up, and then executed perfectly in the race.”

READ MORE: McLaren driver Oscar Piastri’s life outside F1 from height to girlfriend

Oscar Piastri says Mark Webber has been ‘very helpful’ in title battle

Piastri also benefits from having experienced racing driver Mark Webber as his manager, who went up against Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton.

Webber has been using his battles with Hamilton to help Piastri fight against Norris and Max Verstappen, which appears to be working well for the Australian.

Piastri has expressed the importance of having Webber in his camp, as the nine-time race winner can offer a lot of recent experience in F1.

Former driver and 1996 F1 world champion Damon Hill thinks Piastri is ‘odds on’ to win the title after his win at Zandvoort, and his consistency likely means Norris will have his work cut out to close the gap like he did after Canada.