Was 2025 Oscar Piastri’s best chance at an F1 title or a prelude to glory? | Jack Snape
Tumbling from the Formula One precipice, ultimately Oscar Piastri was not the first Australian in 40 years to be crowned world champion.The man from Melbourne finished a narrow third in the driver standings this year behind his McLaren teammate Lando Norris and four-time champion Max Verstappen.Now, he is back to square one.Midway through the season Piastri lead Norris by a comfortable 34 points and Verstappen by a chasm.But a run of six rounds without a podium left him on the outside looking in, and by the end at Abu Dhabi he finished 13 points behind his teammate.
The slender margin makes it tempting to find where those points might have been lost.McLaren’s order to switch positions in Monza cost the Australian six points in the battle with his teammate.The decision not to pit Piastri in Qatar during a safety car? Probably even more.Across a long season however, the Australian was responsible for his spin in Melbourne, and his accident in Azerbaijan.McLaren chief executive Zak Brown may be hard to like, but he is also hard to blame.
Piastri has been measured in his reflections about the season, that it was full of lessons on how to deal with adversity “from different directions”,The tracks, the travel, the sponsorship obligations, the backmarkers slowing at the end of the straight: these are all constants standing between an F1 driver and their ultimate goal,Like Verstappen, ever-present,But Piastri’s comments highlight how some adversity has been coming from his own garage,He told reporters on Sunday nothing will change next season around the level of competition within McLaren, and Norris will not “become Superman” even if he is now world champion.
The papaya rulebook might need a rewrite, or the rubbish bin.“I’m expecting full fairness from the team and equality going forwards,” he told reporters after the Abu Dhabi race.At age 24, the Australian is just getting started in Formula One.Norris – himself only 26 – said this week his teammate will “at some point, get the better of me”.The pair both finished 2025 with seven race wins, and were hard to separate over their performances in qualifying and sprints.
Norris might have won the title, but he did not do enough to show he is in a different class to Piastri, even if he did claim at his championship celebrations: “I feel like I drove at a level I don’t think other people can match”.Beyond Norris, there is adversity Piastri didn’t face this year that he will in 2026.Radically different F1 regulations will bring changes to the power unit, chassis and aerodynamics.The McLarens’ existing engineering advantage, underscored by back-to-back constructors’ titles, made far more of a difference to the seasons of Norris and Piastri than either’s driving talent.The uncertainty around the pecking order under next season’s rules, which are also designed to encourage overtaking, leaves the 2026 title race wide open.
Sign up to Sport in FocusOur picture editors select their favourite sporting images from the past week, from the spectacular to the powerful, and with a little bit of fun thrown inafter newsletter promotionOn one hand, that means Piastri might not get a better chance to win a championship.He fumbled the title from the cockpit of the fastest car, with a 34-point lead on his nearest rival in the second half of a season.Verstappen, racing for a new-look Red Bull team, now without long-time advisor Helmut Marko, will lead a field sure to improve.On the other, McLaren with all their resources and technical wherewithal are unlikely to become terrible overnight.Piastri is still one of Formula One’s younger drivers, and will be well-placed to adapt to the modified cars.
In the time since Norris has been at McLaren, Piastri has driven for Alpine and in other classes, winning F3 and F2 championships.Brown told Piastri after he crossed the line in Abu Dhabi they would “go again” next year, praising the Australian – even as he was coming to terms with personal disappointment – as a “team player”.It was a backhanded compliment, and one roundly criticised, but one that is for now accurate.2026 will show whether Piastri can be something more.
Paramount Skydance makes $108.4bn bid for Warner Bros Discovery, challenging Netflix’s offer – as it happened
Newsflash: Paramount Skydance has launched a hostile takeover offer for Warner Bros Discovery, in an attempt to derail Netflix’s bid for the movie studio and streaming network.Paramount claims that its offer “provides superior value, and a more certain and quicker path to completion to WBD shareholders” than the Netflix offer, which has led to a backlash since it was announced last Friday.Paramount are offering to pay $30.00 per share in cash for Warner Brothers Discovery, which equates to an enterprise value of $108.4bn – ahead of Netflix’s offer which was worth $83bn
Bank of England cutting jobs as part of overhaul after critical Bernanke review
The Bank of England has said it is cutting jobs amid sweeping changes at Threadneedle Street after a highly critical review into its failure to forecast surging inflation.Under budget pressures as it responded to the report from the former US Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke, the Bank has opened a voluntary scheme last week as part of an efficiency drive to find savings.The process, which will run until mid-January, with staff expected to leave in March, was first reported by Bloomberg. The Bank said it was “a mutually agreed, time-limited scheme for staff to choose to apply to leave.“We are now implementing a significant, multiyear transformation of our operations and this will condition our decisions
Divided Fed ponders US interest-rate cut at end of tumultuous year
A divided Federal Reserve meets this week to decide whether to cut interest rates, the US central bank’s last meeting before the end of a tumultuous year.The US central bank faces a number of unique challenges as it weighs its latest interest-rate decision.After the six-week government shutdown briefly shuttered the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal agency that collects economic data on prices and employment, Fed officials have less data to make their decision.Making matters more complicated is what appears to be growing internal division among the committee’s voting members, who are split on whether there should be a third rate cut before the end of the year. Rates currently sit at a range of 3
Anglo American drops plan to pay bosses millions in bonuses after $50bn Teck merger backlash
London-listed miner Anglo American has dropped plans to award its bosses multimillion-pound bonuses if its planned $50bn mega-merger with a Canadian rival goes through, after a backlash from its investors.The FTSE 100 miner had sought shareholder approval for a plan to award its chief executive, Duncan Wanblad, a share bonus worth £8.5m if the deal to buy Teck Resources to create a copper producing giant was completed.Other senior executives were also incentivised through the plan, which would have updated long-term awards made in 2024 and 2025 to hand them a minimum of 62.5% of share awards when the merger was completed
‘We’ll never be able to rebuild’: despair of ex-Vodafone franchisees and pressures on their mental health
Experiences raise questions about how telecoms firm treated small business owners, whose commission it cutWhen Adrian Howe drowned in August 2018, his family found some solace in the support of his longtime employer.The bond between the 58-year-old and Vodafone – the multinational mobile phone group for which Howe had worked for 20 years – was so tight that his funeral featured a wreath shaped like the company’s speech mark brand.Meanwhile, his widow was paid the equivalent of a death-in-service benefit, even though Howe had left the company weeks earlier. “I was reassured that Dad would be ‘reinstated’ back into Vodafone as if he had never actually left,” recalls daughter Kirsty-Anne Holmes. “He had [left] in order to open [Vodafone] stores as a franchise
Extracting hangovers from beer: inside Budweiser owner’s ‘nolo’ brewery in south Wales
A “de-alcoholisation facility” sounds like somewhere to check in after a boozy Christmas, but in the new annexe of a brewery in south Wales they are extracting hangovers from beer.With demand for no-alcohol and low-alcohol (“nolo”) beer taking off in the UK, the hi-tech brewing apparatus enables the plant at Magor, which produces more than 1bn pints of Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois a year, to make the increasingly popular teetotal versions too.The new unit is part of AB InBev’s global brewing empire and at its official opening on Friday, Brian Perkins, whose wider management responsibilities include running the drinks group’s UK arm, acknowledged that in the early days alcohol-free beer tasted “lousy”.Alcohol gives beer a sweet, warming, full-bodied taste, as well as affecting how other flavour compounds evaporate, resulting in its distinctive flavour. So removing it and being left with a drink that still tastes good has been a huge challenge for the industry
Paramount launches $108.4bn hostile bid for Warner Bros Discovery
Anglo American’s merger bonus was a pay wheeze too far | Nils Pratley
‘It has to be genuine’: older influencers drive growth on social media
Scores of UK parliamentarians join call to regulate most powerful AI systems
‘Like a movie’: Lando Norris relives final lap to glory and partying till 6am as world champion
Account closures and restrictions are angering racing punters but there is an answer