Formula 1 News: Piastri plays down social media 'accident'

(GMM) Oscar Piastri’s title hopes are collapsing as the Australian’s difficult run at McLaren worsened with a subdued Las Vegas race – while teammate Lando Norris strengthened his position as championship favorite.

Norris didn’t convert pole into victory on Saturday night, but Piastri slipped even further behind – with two race weekends remaining, he now trails Norris by a significant 30 points.

Off-track, things deteriorated further when Piastri was pressed about why he shared – and later deleted – Bernie Ecclestone’s claim that McLaren is favoring Norris for commercial and national reasons.

“I don’t know,” Piastri said in Vegas. “I saw it when I woke up this morning. Maybe I did it by accident. It clearly wasn’t intentional. I don’t know what happened.”

McLaren insists the atmosphere between the pair remains healthy, but joint social media content has quietly disappeared, and Spain’s Diario Sport quoted Norris as being unimpressed by the Instagram blunder.

“It’s clear things haven’t been going well for him lately,” Norris said. “I know how tough that can be, but he’s crossed a line here that we’ll discuss internally.”

McLaren CEO Zak Brown was also in damage-limitation mode after comments promoting his new book portrayed Max Verstappen as an “arrogant bully”.

According to De Telegraaf, Brown quickly messaged the four-time world champion to clarify that the quotes were “taken out of context”.

“I called him a bruiser, a fighter – but that’s actually a compliment,” Brown said. “I call Ayrton Senna that as well, and he’s my favorite driver of all time.”

Speaking to Sky Deutschland, Brown instead focused on his own title contender.

“I’ve never seen Lando in such good shape, physically and mentally,” he said. “He’s very relaxed.

“Perhaps his time away from the championship lead helped him to be the hunter instead of the hunted. He’s very focused. All of that combined with this relaxed mindset – it all comes together.”