For a team that could have, some could argue should have, three 1-2 results this season, Guenther Steiner believes McLaren’s “mistakes” could trip them up.

But if they get on top of that, he would put his money on Oscar Piastri beating Lando Norris to the World title.

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Although McLaren did not set the fastest lap time during pre-season testing, the MCL39’s long-run pace caught the eye with rivals claiming the car was as much as “two to three tenths” ahead of the chasing pack.

Any suggestion that was just mind games on their part was undone as the Woking team locked out the front row of the grid at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix and would’ve taken the 1-2 in the race were it not for Piastri’s slip-up in the rain that meant Lando Norris took the chequered flag ahead of Max Verstappen.

A week later, McLaren went from being half a second up in practice to losing the Sprint pole to Lewis Hamilton, who went on to dominate the short race with former Aston Martin strategy chief Bernie Collins calling out McLaren’s “push-cool-push” strategy in SQ3.

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McLaren nailed it later that Saturday as Piastri secured pole position for the Grand Prix with Norris only pipped by an impressive lap from George Russell, before the Woking team brought home the 1-2 on the Sunday.

But even then it wasn’t perfect as Norris was hampered by a brake issue – “a leak in one of the components” – that meant he had to deal with a critical long brake pedal in the closing laps.

It’s these sorts of mistakes, coupled with the fact that even when McLaren get it right they are not lapping third-place and down, that has Steiner saying the title is by no means a two-horse race.

“I wouldn’t say nobody can compete,” the former Haas team boss told the Red Flags Podcast. “It’s not as easy as it looks, because you saw it in the Sprint if they are not doing a perfect job, they still lose.

“They cannot make any mistakes because there’s always someone there to take it away from them.

“But if they do it perfectly, I think they’re definitely the team to beat.

“To the other cars, they had a good distance to them but they didn’t lap them or anything. Some of them, Mercedes sometimes shows very good speed, and they just need a little bit more and they can get there.”

“But as I said, a small mistake or just not getting it perfect, and it happens to them and they lose a race.”

But if it does become a two-driver race with one McLaren team-mate pitted against the other, Steiner says he’s willing to bet on Piastri walking away with the crown.

“I would call myself [a genius],” he said of his pre-China prediction that Piastri would win. “You cannot take a pick between Oscar and Lando because they are equal in my opinion.

“[But] I think Oscar at the moment has got the edge. In China, he showed he has the edge. All the time he was better so, I don’t know, maybe Lando didn’t like China.

“If I would have to put money now on the World Champion now, I would put it on Oscar Piastri. When you saw him speaking after pole position qualifying, he seemed to be pretty upbeat because normally he didn’t speak a lot. I think he wants more of it because he enjoying that quite a bit. I think he’s in a good position now.”

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