Mark Hughes: Can Piastri cling on to title like Button did in 2009?

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Mark Hughes
October 22, 2025

Caught out by his own car, and facing a resurgent Red Bull: Oscar Piastri's 2025 season is increasingly resembling Jenson Button's 2009 championship winning year

Jenson Button and Oscar Piastri celebrate Spanish Grand Prix victories on the podium

Spanish GP winners, 16 years apart: Piastri can take inspiration from Brawn GP's title win

Grand Prix Photo

Mark Hughes
October 22, 2025

Oscar Piastri was strangely off the pace in Austin last weekend. Although team-mate Lando Norris had to give best to Max Verstappen, he was at least able to set competitive lap times to the Red Bull in the few laps in which he was not stuck behind Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari. Piastri, by contrast, was nowhere near such pace, regularly half-a-second or more slower on his way to an unremarkable fifth place.

He just never found his rhythm, he explained afterwards. He struggled at the same track last year too. The Circuit of the Americas induces a very unusual tyre behaviour, one requiring a counter-intuitive approach from the drivers. Such are the stresses imposed on the rubber through the high-speed esses, the long parabola of Turns 15-16-17-18, and the slow-speed acceleration zones out of the tight corners, the tyres almost immediately become heat-soaked through to the carcass and don’t get time to recover. Four laps and they are overheating, regardless of how they are nursed. This would apply even if you two-stopped – and so the extra 21sec loss would never be recovered. Hence everyone was intending to run a one-stop. Everyone also then found that their cars to be gripless handfuls, something exacerbated by the gusting winds.

Piastri just did not seem to gel with the car like this. The top three – Verstappen, Norris and Leclerc – were having regular wayward moments, as were many others through the field. By contrast Piastri seemed to be driving behind the tyre, trying not to over-stress the rubber. Normally, this would be exactly how to meet the challenge of a high-deg tyre. But around here, it wasn’t the way. The tyres were going to be too hot regardless.

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“When the conditions are such that we have low grip, you really need to challenge the car,” observed Andrea Stella after the race. “You need to lean on this understeer, oversteer, locking – and this is an area of his driving that Oscar has an opportunity to improve.”

It was a peculiarity of the track and it caught Piastri out. But it came at a bad time in the sequencing of events for him as he defends his lead in the world championship. Just a few races ago he dominated at Zandvoort, his seventh victory of the season extending his points lead in the world championship to 34.

Since then his campaign has faltered: surrendering his position to Norris at Monza, a complete debacle at Baku with crashes in Q3 and on the first lap of the race, Norris bumping him aside in Singapore and now this. While he’s faltered Verstappen has been on the rampage. Since finishing second behind Piastri at Zandvoort he’s scored three wins in four races and finished second (to George Russell) in the other. Piastri’s lead is down to 14 points over Norris and 40 over Verstappen with five grands prix and two sprints to go.

The numbers still favour Piastri but the momentum is definitely with Red Bull and Verstappen. This has something of the feeling of Jenson Button’s 2009 campaign. After winning six of the first seven races in his Brawn he didn’t win another all year and meanwhile Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull was hitting form. Button too could occasionally be caught out by tyre behaviour and that definitely played into the awkward sequencing of events for him in the latter half of that season.

Button vs Vettel points in 2009 season

Resurgent Vettel eroded Button’s lead in ’09

Piastri vs Verstappen F1 points graph in 2025

Verstappen has five rounds remaining in ’25

While it’s tempting to see a title battle just from the psychological perspective, of how the contenders are handling the pressure, it’s never just that. There are always physical, technical factors driving the events too. For example, Vettel didn’t start winning in the second half of ’09 just because Button was feeling the pressure. From Silverstone – i.e. the next race after Button’s sixth victory – Red Bull had fitted its car with its new double diffuser. It was from that point onwards the fastest car on the grid. Similarly, Verstappen isn’t suddenly winning because of Piastri’s troubles; the RB21 Red Bull has been aggressively updated since the summer break, with a front wing and floor combination which has transformed the car.

With such a car under him, Verstappen’s rampage is certainly adding a fascinating new dimension to the contest. But it would be foolhardy to count out Piastri from bouncing back.