Oscar Piastri’s engineer reveals the ‘dangerous’ mood on his side of the McLaren garage

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Oscar Piastri arrives at this weekend’s United States Grand Prix with an 18-point lead over McLaren teammate Lando Norris. The events in Singapore will surely dial up the tension inside the garage.

Piastri didn’t criticise Norris directly after the Briton barged his way through at the start of the race. Instead, he suggested McLaren weren’t being ‘fair’ after they decided not to swap the cars back around.

The team would ultimately seal the constructors’ title at Marina Bay, which has led to suggestions that their drivers could face fewer restrictions from this weekend’s onwards. But McLaren are trying to maintain harmony between Norris and Piastri long-term, so they won’t allow any reckless abandon.

Piastri’s lead has almost halved since Norris’ Dutch GP retirement, which seemed as if it might be a decisive moment in the title race. Max Verstappen, 63 points back, has re-emerged as a contender too.

Oscar Piastri’s McLaren crew know that ‘this is our chance’

Piastri’s disastrous Azerbaijan GP weekend, where he crashed out of both qualifying and the race, led to suggestions that he was feeling the pressure. But McLaren engineer Tom Stallard says that ‘pressure is a privilege’.

It may only be Piastri’s third season in F1 – no driver has won a title so early since Lewis Hamilton in 2008 – but he has worked for around ’10 years’ to be in this position.

Back in August, Juan Pablo Montoya said Piastri was starting to realise this could be his only chance. And Stallard says that reflects the mood inside his McLaren camp right now.

The Woking outfit will race with the highly-rated Mercedes engine next year and appear to have all the personnel required to sustain their dominance. But nothing is certain in F1, particularly in the context of major regulation changes.

Stallard told ESPN: “Hopefully, we’ll be in the same position next year, but we definitely have that Olympic-every-four-years kind of feeling, that feeling that this is our chance.

“And that’s always a slightly dangerous thing to feel, because very much handling pressure is about doing what you’re good at, rather than delivering some magic. And normally, when it looks like magic to the rest of the world, it’s actually just because you went out and did your thing. So we’ll be trying to do that.

“I think we’re both quite well placed to handle that pressure. You’re right in that the pressure is going to ramp up, but people say pressure is a privilege. That pressure is something that he’s worked for, for let’s say 10 years, arguably more, in order to be in a position where he can have that pressure.

“And it’s very rare that you get to be world champion without being able to ride that pressure. So, I think it comes with the territory, and we’re in the territory we want to be in.”

Tom Stallard explains what he loves about Oscar Piastri’s radio messages

Piastri’s condemnatory Singapore radio messages were so noteworthy partly because he’s so rarely emotive in the cockpit. This has been cited as one of his strengths, ensuring he doesn’t overreact to boosts or setbacks.

Stallard says he doesn’t need to manage Piastri’s ’emotional state’ behind the wheel. He can rely on the ‘stoic’ Australian to keep himself under control.

“In the race, his ability to process information has always been good,” he explained. “He doesn’t necessarily say a lot, but generally what he says is really high-quality, accurate information that we can actually work off.

• READ MORE: McLaren blown away by Oscar Piastri ‘superpower’ that they never expected to see this season

“One of the positives with Oscar is you don’t get a lot of slightly confusing, kind of complaining about a situation that he can’t actually control. Generally, because he’s quite stoic, if he is frustrated he tends to keep that to himself.

“It makes people making decisions on his behalf have a slightly easier ride, because you don’t get so distracted by, ‘Oh, I need to also manage his emotional state.’ You can kind of trust him to do that.”

Stallard has been Piastri’s engineer throughout his young F1 career, having previously worked with Carlos Sainz and Daniel Ricciardo.