After a qualifying session to forget for the then-championship leader, Oscar Piastri didn’t have an easy task trying to make up positions during the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Although his race pace after a poor start looked solid, the question remains whether Piastri could have finished higher and kept himself at the top of the drivers’ standings. The telemetry data gives us some answers.

Could Piastri have kept the lead in the championship?

After qualifying only P8, Piastri started the race from P7 due to Carlos Sainz’s grid penalty, which moved the Spaniard back despite outqualifying the Australian. Alongside gaining one position, this also gave Oscar the chance to start on the cleaner side of the track.

Because of this unequal grip level on the start–finish straight in Mexico, we’ve often seen drivers even from P4 take the lead into Turn 1. Oscar was, of course, too far back to challenge for the lead, but expectations were that he would at least make up one or two places in the opening lap.

The outcome was completely different. After a decent initial getaway, Piastri had a poor run through the first sequence of corners and at one point found himself down in P11. He managed to limit the damage by the end of the opening lap and crossed the line in P9, behind Yuki Tsunoda.

This wasn’t the result of a mistake on his part but rather bad luck. The two cars ahead of him at the entry to Turn 1 were Max Verstappen and George Russell. Their failed attempt to go around the outside for the lead threw up a lot of dust and dirt directly into Oscar’s car.

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Telemetry shows that the Australian lost grip at that moment and had to correct the steering to regain control. This compromised his line through Turns 1 and 2, allowing the cars behind him to get through.

Although the McLaren driver had noticeably better pace than Tsunoda, Mexico is not the easiest track for overtaking, especially if the driver in front also has DRS. It wasn’t until lap 11 that Oscar managed to get past the Japanese driver, moving into eighth place — one position lower than where he had started. The next target was the two Mercedes.

Telemetry data clearly shows how Oscar’s pace improved significantly once he was free from Tsunoda, and how it dropped again as he caught up with Russell.

The fact that George had DRS because of his team-mate ahead of him meant Oscar couldn’t create a strong enough chance to attack. Over the next several laps, he kept the pressure on, but it wasn’t enough.

On lap 25, Piastri pitted to attempt an undercut on Russell. Mercedes immediately responded and brought George in on the next lap, which allowed him to rejoin still ahead of Oscar. The Australian might have had a better chance had he not encountered Alex Albon on hard tyres, which cost him valuable time.

With track positions unchanged, the story remained the same — Oscar sat in Russell’s slipstream but simply couldn’t build enough of a straight-line advantage to attack into Turn 1. Meanwhile, Mercedes decided to swap their drivers to give George a shot at Oliver Bearman.

Seeing that Oscar’s chances of overtaking were slim, McLaren opted for a two-stop strategy, hoping fresher tyres would give him a better opportunity. We even heard this message over the live broadcast a lap earlier, which gave Mercedes time to react.

On lap 48, Kimi Antonelli and Piastri pitted at the same time, but faster work from the McLaren crew allowed Oscar to gain a position in the pit lane. Russell and Bearman responded one lap later, but without changing their positions.

This time, Russell didn’t have DRS to defend, and on lap 60, Oscar pulled off a brilliant late-braking move into Turn 1 to take fifth place.

At that point, the chase was on — both for Bearman in the Haas and for maintaining the lead in the championship. The graph below shows how quickly Oscar was closing the gap. In clean air, McLaren was undoubtedly the fastest car on track.

Unfortunately for Piastri, the virtual safety car robbed him of what was probably his only real chance to attack for P4 on the final lap. This means that Lando Norris is once again at the top of the championship standings, with just one point separating the two.

The key question remains: could Oscar have done better?

What cost him most in Mexico was the prolonged battle with the Mercedes drivers, which took up the majority of his race. Had he not lost two positions at the start, he wouldn’t have spent 11 laps stuck behind Tsunoda, which would almost certainly have given him more time to fight the Mercedes, and possibly Bearman later on.

In hindsight, Verstappen’s Medium–Soft strategy was clearly the fastest, but Piastri realistically couldn’t follow the same path.

Starting from P7 on mediums is a risky move when most of the cars around you are on softs. On top of that, Verstappen spent most of the race in clean air, which gave him much better control over tyre temperatures and race pace. Oscar didn’t have that luxury at any stage.

In the end, we can say that Piastri truly extracted the maximum from the situation, considering that he was down to P9 after lap one. He can’t even be fully blamed for that, as the drivers ahead significantly affected his line through Turn 1.

With such a small gap in points to his team-mate, every one of these small details can prove decisive. Whether they will be for Oscar remains to be seen over the next four races of the season.

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