Oscar Piastri has been urged to walk away from McLaren in the wake of the 2025 Formula 1 season.
The Australian driver was leading the championship race for a large portion of the season before he endured a horror run of form.
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The 24-year-old has found himself at the centre of growing speculation with fans believing the team has shown preferential treatment to British teammate Lando Norris.
Piastri has struggled to keep up with Norris over the past month with the Brit romping to victory in Mexico and Brazil as he’s turned a 34-point deficit into a 24-point advantage with three races remaining on the calendar.
Despite being contracted to the team until the end of the 2028 season, former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner is urging the Aussie to jump ship and find another team.
“Especially if he doesn’t win the championship. I think he has a good chance to get in any other good car,” Steiner said on the Red Flags podcast.
“He’s a good driver. And change sometimes is good. He’s young enough; he can adapt to it. He should, and I think he will.”
The F1 icon was asked to expand on why he believes a change of scenery would be best for the Aussie.
“I think if that is happening, he just needs to regroup over the winter and come back stronger than before,” he said.
“Otherwise, if he doesn’t come back stronger, I think the best is that he changes teams then. That’s my opinion about it.
“Because otherwise, you don’t get it back. But he could come back, because I still rate him highly.”
Following the Dutch Grand Prix, Piastri was clear atop the standings with four-time world champion Max Verstappen a distant third, more than 100 points behind.
Over the course of the next six races however, Piastri has endured a nightmare that has seen him register only one podium while failing to finish in Azerbaijan and also crashing out of the sprint races in at the US Grand Prix and Brazilian Grand Prix.
It has seen Verstappen close the gap down to just 25 points ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, a circuit the McLaren’s aren’t expected to do as well as at compared to their rivals.
Steiner believes if Piastri’s recent wretched run continues, he’ll tumble down to third on the drivers standings by season’s end.
“You guys saw what happened in Brazil, or not in Brazil, the last four races. So, why not?,” he said.
“I mean, he continues to do it.
“If you say that Oscar is now destroyed mentally, I mean, Max will be ahead of him, absolutely. And Max is motivated like hell. As we can see in Brazil, he didn’t give up after a crappy qualifying. He rolled his sleeves up and made it better, and finished on the podium.”
The Formula 1 grid returns to action this weekend for the Las Vegas Grand Prix with the race set to get underway from 3pm (AEDT) on Sunday.
