Piastri: Championship too close for McLaren to pick one over the other

However, Piastri, who has been on the back foot recently compared to Norris, believes McLaren will not start openly supporting his teammate for the F1 Drivers' Crown after wrapping up the Constructors' Title in Singapore.

While Norris was second behind United States Grand Prix winner Max Verstappen, Piastri has struggled all weekend in Austin.

After the race, he reflected: "Today race pace could have saved you [from a difficult qualifying], but I didn't really have that either.

"It's something I want to work on, but qualifying has still generally been consistently good. There have obviously been the highs at certain points, but this weekend, apart from Baku, has really been the first weekend where it has been a letdown. Even if it has been sub-par before, it has still been pretty good.

"So some things to try and understand from this weekend because clearly it just wasn't related to qualifying," the Aussie maintained.

When asked about his plan to bounce back and respond to Norris' recent advantage, Piastri responded: "Trying to work out why it just didn't gel with the car this weekend is the first port of call, I guess.

"It was just difficult to get into a rhythm at all, and that has been the big difference compared to other circuits we have been to, even recently."

Verstappen is now 40 points behind Piastri in the F1 Drivers' Championship with five races remaining so far this season out which two are under the Sprint format.

That would naturally bring up questions about McLaren's plans to secure the title double which could mean backing one of their drivers, Norris in this instance, who has been taking the fight to the reigning F1 Champion rather than Piastri.

But the 24-year-old driver from Melbourne doesn't believe that to be the case saying: "I don't know. I don't think so.

"We are still so incredibly tight, and we've both said we wanted an opportunity to try and fight for the championship because we deserve it.

"So I think it's far too close to start picking one over the other," Piastri concluded.

Piastri and Norris also got wiped out on a chaotic opening lap of the Sprint Race on Saturday while Verstappen went on to win.