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SAO PAULO — Oscar Piastri<\/a> risks reputational damage if he does not win this year’s Formula 1 world championship, according to title rival Max Verstappen<\/a>‘s father, Jos Verstappen.<\/p>\n In early September, Piastri appeared to have one hand on the 2025 title, 34 points clear of McLaren teammate Lando Norris<\/a> in a championship he had led for six months.<\/p>\n That lead has disappeared since, and Piastri has not been on the podium since the controversial Italian Grand Prix, which featured him obeying a team order to let Norris pass for second position after McLaren botched a late pit stop.<\/p>\n Norris now leads by one point, with Max Verstappen considered a title outsider 36 points back with four races left.<\/p>\n Jos Verstappen, who was a teammate of F1 legend Michael Schumacher<\/a> in the 1990s, has questioned what has happened to make the Australian’s season unravel so quickly.<\/p>\n “I find it quite strange what’s happening at McLaren,” Verstappen told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. “Piastri can’t have suddenly forgotten how to drive, right? If I were him, or his manager [ex-driver Mark Webber<\/a>], I’d bang my fist on the table internally at least once.<\/p>\n “Because right now everyone is wondering whether he can handle the pressure, and that’s not good for your reputation … Piastri’s reputation in this case.”<\/p>\n The sudden turnaround in the championship has spawned plenty of other theories beyond Piastri not being able to handle pressure. Norris was booed<\/a> by fans after winning the Mexican Grand Prix, with local journalists later reasoning that a growing theory among the crowd being that McLaren has favored him over Piastri in recent months.<\/p>\n McLaren has repeatedly denied those theories and has attempted to keep the intrateam battle between its drivers as fair as possible.<\/p>\n