Webber's Exit Puts Piastri's 2025 Title Slump Back in Focus

Mark Webber is no longer part of Oscar Piastri's management, and the split has now been confirmed. Both sides describe it as mutual, but the timing puts the spotlight back on a 2025 title fight that ended badly for Piastri and, according to one report, never sat well with Webber.

A split that had been building

Webber had already stepped away from trackside duties at the start of the season. Rather than supporting Piastri at race weekends, he concentrated on the commercial side of the driver's contracts. Piastri filled the gap by bringing in Pedro Matos, the engineer who had worked with him in Formula 2. Now the arrangement with Webber has ended completely.

The statement from Webber and his wife, Ann Neal, avoided drama. They described it as the "appropriate time" for both parties to move on. "This will allow Oscar to build on his achievements under a new management structure, and for us to embark on our new ventures," it read.

That's a clean, diplomatic exit. Still, a management change this public rarely happens for one reason, and the 2025 season is where most of the speculation has focused.

Where the friction showed up

The Race reported that Webber was "not impressed" by McLaren's conduct last season. It's unclear whether that feeling influenced his decision to withdraw, and neither side has tied the two together. Earlier this year there were rumours that Webber was no longer welcome in McLaren's hospitality area, a sign that the relationship had grown strained.

Before that, a separate report claimed McLaren had been behind Piastri's decision to reshape his management team ahead of 2026. Piastri himself treated the change as a natural result of becoming more experienced. He has played down the move every time it has come up, while Webber has never publicly aired any major grievances. That restraint is part of why the story has stayed at the level of reading between the lines.

The decisions that cost Piastri the title

Piastri went into the Monza weekend with a 34-point lead in the championship. He ended the season third, 13 points behind Norris, and the run-in cost him dearly. At Monza he had to hand over second place after his teammate's slow pit stop. At the next race, Singapore, McLaren chose not to swap the drivers after Norris made contact while overtaking at the start.

Then came a six-race podium drought, which coincided with the best stretch of Norris's season. For a driver fighting for a title, a run like that is hard to recover from.

McLaren's explanation, and why it didn't land everywhere

McLaren's explanation centred on low-grip circuits, specifically Baku, Mexico City and Las Vegas. On the surface, the argument holds up. Piastri crashed out of qualifying, finished 42 seconds behind his victorious teammate in Mexico, and lost ground in Las Vegas, where the team came home second and fourth before a double disqualification.

Team principal Andrea Stella framed the issue as a question of driving style. "The low-grip circuits required a driving style that came so natural to Lando, and so much thinking from Oscar about what the car needs," he said. "With the level of drivers we have at the moment, as soon as you have to think too much in the way you drive, you lose several positions."

He also narrowed the hesitation down. "I think really, the only event in which Oscar had some hesitations this year, is just Baku. All the rest, in my view, has a technical explanation."

That's where the disagreement sits. Stella's version puts the problem mainly in one driver's adaptation to certain conditions. The Race's reporting suggests Webber saw the 'championship-wrecking slump' as something the explanation didn't fully cover. Whether that's a fair reading or not, a single-circuit-type explanation for a run that spanned several rounds invites exactly this kind of scrutiny.

What comes next for Piastri

Piastri finished sixth at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix while Norris took his third win of the season. Piastri hasn't stood on the podium since Miami, and he now trails his teammate by almost 100 points. Stella has continued to point to Piastri's discomfort in low-grip conditions as a factor, and the 2026 season has carried that issue forward. The new regulations brought a significant reduction in downforce, which makes the car harder to handle on the edge of grip.

My read is that the management change matters less than whether Piastri's low-grip form improves under the new regulations. If it does, the 2025 explanation gets easier to accept. If it doesn't, the questions from that season will keep resurfacing, regardless of who is or isn't in the paddock.