Did Silverstone F1 loss show the real Oscar Piastri?

As we head into the second half of the 2025 Formula 1 season, Oscar Piastri’s rare but genuine glimpse of inner rage and competitive fierceness at the British Grand Prix is setting up an intriguing title battle with Lando Norris.

After being handed a 10-second penalty for braking erratically behind the safety car, Piastri lost a very likely win to team-mate Norris, bringing the Briton to within eight points in the championship.

Piastri is known for being so calm and level-headed on good and bad days, but the perceived injustice had him absolutely seething. “Yeah, I’m not gonna say much. I’ll get myself in trouble, so… well done, to [Nico] Hulkenberg. I think that’s the highlight of the day, so… yeah, I’ll leave it there. Apparently you can’t brake behind the safety car anymore,” Piastri said while biting his tongue, with his muted response not remotely doing justice to the inner rage that was clear for all to see.

Better evidence of just how wronged Piastri felt came through in his odd – if not outrageous – request for McLaren to swap the positions back out of a sense of justice, which would have ended up with Norris ceding a dream home win through no fault of his own.

McLaren naturally turned it down, and afterwards Piastri admitted he was never expecting the team to accept his request. But if you don’t ask, you don’t get. As Sky F1 commentator Martin Brundle said: “That’s the first time we’ve seen the angry side of the calm, silent Aussie assassin.”

Aussie grit

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Erik Junius

But if Piastri’s actions became a talking point then, it’s not because it was some sort of new character trait he unlocked, but because it was a rare display of the real, fierce competitor that he has always been. If you are still wondering just how bad Piastri wants this, then don’t listen to his measured press conference answers, but look at the trajectory he has walked to get here.

Aged 14 Piastri moved to the UK with his father to pursue a single-seater career on the European scene, but after six months the latter returned to the Piastri family in Melbourne, with young Oscar deciding to stay behind alone to forge a career.

“My dad said: ‘I’m going back to Australia to live with the rest of your family’,” Piastri recounted last year in an interview with Motorsport.com. “‘Either you can come back with me or you can stay here, but it will mean you go to boarding school’.

“I was enjoying racing in Europe and obviously wanted to try and pursue my dream of being an F1 driver, so I knew that I had to stay.”

In doing so Piastri walked a similar path to many drivers from Australia and New Zealand before him, including his manager and mentor Mark Webber. It is no coincidence Webber’s personal mantra is ‘Aussie grit’, as that is exactly what it takes for drivers from Down Under to even get onto the same playing field as their European peers.

Mark Webber, Oscar Piastri and Ann Webber

Photo by: Uncredited

That sacrifice goes some way towards explaining Piastri’s laser focus on performance rather than off-track activities, which has netted him an undeserved label of being boring. But alongside his unmistakable driving talent, his ability to roll with the punches is also why he has found himself in the position he is in now – fighting for the world championship in his third season.

“I know I come across as very calm but I’m not a robot. I do have peaks and troughs,” he said. “Some people perform at their best when they’re in a bit of red mist, others perform when they’re as relaxed as they can be. I’m probably more on the relaxed side of things, but there is definitely being too relaxed too…”

His explanation for his muted team radio messages, even on the in-lap after winning a race, is quite simple: “Yes, there’s a radio button, but you can say things without pushing the button…”

Piastri prefers to do his talking on track, and as he showed Max Verstappen he’s no pushover in their tense wheel-to-wheel fight in Jeddah, he demonstrated to Norris and McLaren in Silverstone how fiercely he will fight his corner over the next 12 races.

A glimpse of a McLaren title fight to come

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

As we head into the second half of the 2025 season and Verstappen is gradually losing touch with the McLarens, a straight intra-team fight for the world title between Piastri and Norris is a tantalising prospect. Will their unusual harmony last, or will more and more cracks begin to appear as McLaren’s so-called ‘papaya rules’ come under increasing strain?

McLaren’s resolve has been tested a few times now, first with Piastri making a late lunge on Norris for the lead of the 2024 Italian GP which led to Norris losing a position to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc too. Then there was Norris’ judgement error as he drove into the back of Piastri in Canada last month, with both incidents reminders of the margins McLaren is demanding from its drivers for this wheel-to-wheel jousting to be able to continue.

The team led by Zak Brown and Andrea Stella has had it pretty easy with its compliant drivers so far. But in fairness, that is not a coincidence but a situation the team created on purpose. Norris and Piastri weren’t signed to long-term deals just because of their speed, but also because they have proven their ability to work together and put the team’s interests first.

But that is much easier to do in the early stages of a 24-race season, when a title showdown feels ages away and Verstappen still seems like a credible title threat, than it will be when we get to the business end of the season – say Las Vegas in November – and all the chips are on the table.

McLaren will feel confident this is the first title fight of many, but with the all-new 2026 regulations around the corner there is no guarantee either driver will ever find themselves in this position again.

Will Norris and Piastri still be towing the party line? Or will the prospect of a maiden world championship mean their competitive spirit, which Piastri emphatically put on display in Silverstone, is going to overrule reason?