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Former F1 champion Nico Rosberg has picked Oscar Piastri as his championship favorite after McLaren teammate and rival Lando Norris ended up crashing out of the F1 Canadian GP. The duo are one and two in the championship, and more often than not the gap between the two comes down to winning the small battles.
Those small battles have been in qualifying, where Norris has continued to make errors when it counts, handing the advantage to his McLaren teammate. Even in the Canadian GP, Norris messed up his final lap, which meant he started the race in P7.
That wasn't, however, the major error from the Brit's race weekend, as that came in the dying stages of the F1 Canadian GP. Lando Norris, on slightly fresher tires, was hounding teammate Oscar Piastri in the dying stages of the race. Piastri, on his part, had exploited his hard tires trying to overtake Kimi Antonelli ahead of him.
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In a bid to overtake McLaren teammate Piastri, Lando Norris ended up running into the back of him and suffering a DNF. After the race, former Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg admitted that he had now definitively switched his favorite to the 24-year-old Australian, as the incident in Canada was a watershed moment for him. He told Sky F1:
“That, for me, was a watershed moment out there. I would say it’s the first time for me, to say that Oscar Piastri is now the big favourite to win the championship this year. I’ve never said that so far."
He added:
“In fact, I was always more on Lando’s side. I was like, he’s going to clean things up and just have that little edge and speed, and he’s going to bring it home. But Oscar is just so strong. He’s just always delivering zero mistakes. I mean I’ve seen one mistake from him in the last two years in the most horrible conditions in Melbourne , and that’s it. He’s just always there.”
Rosberg opens up on the composure of the McLaren driver
Nico Rosberg specifically praised the composure of the McLaren driver as he revealed a conversation he'd had with Oscar Piastri's manager, Mark Webber. Talking about how the Australian doesn't get too excited or bothered by things that are happening around him, Rosberg revealed (via Sky F1):
“I spoke to Mark Webber, who used to be my ex-team-mate at Williams, who’s now Oscar’s manager and he also said whether he finishes first or fifth, in the evening it’s just having a pizza, and it’s the same state of mind. Of course, a nice excitement after the race, but then it’s done and we move on. It’s just super, incredibly solid.”
McLaren, on their part, have made it clear that the team is not going to pick one driver over the other in this battle. It is ultimately going to come down to how each driver performs throughout the year and ends with the most points.
