\n<\/p>\n
As Oscar Piastri desperately works to rebound from his recent Formula One woes, an Australian restaurant chain is doing its part to keep his title hopes alive.<\/p>\n
After offering free burgers for every time the Australian made the podium, Grill\u2019d burger chain has apologised for putting a \u201ccurse\u201d on the McLaren driver.<\/p>\n
Piastri has not finished in the top three since the promotion was relaunched five races ago, with his teammate Lando Norris taking the championship lead off him.<\/p>\n
Grill\u2019d\u2019s Piastri 81 Burger was first put on the menu before the Australian Grand Prix in March, with Piastri\u2019s endorsement, after he was on the podium in Italy and was leading the championship.<\/p>\n
But since then the 24-year-old driver has crashed, collided and picked up penalty points.<\/p>\n
The chain then changed the offer to reward fans for when he finished a race \u2013 and Piastri subsequently crashed out of the S\u00e3o Paulo sprint.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease stop this promotion and give us some hope for the last three races,\u201d said one fan on the chain\u2019s Facebook page this week.<\/p>\n
Grill\u2019d apologised on social media to \u201ceveryone who believes in the \u2018curse\u2019\u201d. \u201cWe never meant to create a burger so delicious it could change the course of F1 history,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Burger curses are not on the mind of Piastri\u2019s manager, Mark Webber, who says his charge will have to find \u201cdeep motivations\u201d and \u201ccharacter\u201d to provide a rousing end to his chastening 2025 season.<\/p>\n
But even if this year\u2019s drivers\u2019 crown may now be beyond Piastri, as Norris is 24 points clear with just three grand prix remaining, Webber was also quick to remind everyone of the near \u201cunprecedented\u201d achievements of the man who\u2019s still a relative three-season novice.<\/p>\n
<\/span>\u2018I was an old dog\u2019: Mark Webber says Oscar Piastri has achieved a huge amount for such a young driver.<\/span> Photograph: H\u00e9ctor Vivas\/Getty Images<\/p>\n After watching him finish fifth in the S\u00e3o Paulo Grand Prix while Norris won \u2013 the fifth race in a row in which Piastri had missed the podium \u2013 Webber, told Channel 4: \u201cWell, get him turned around.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s low on motivation, put it that way,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s had a tough run, but this is about character, about finding those deep motivations that you need at this point to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Webber, a nine-time grand prix winner who had a near-miss for the title himself in 2010 when leading with three races to go before eventually finishing third behind champion Sebastian Vettel, knows all about the pressures of a title run-in.<\/p>\n Whatever the result of the 2025 campaign, Webber felt it should still be taken into account just what an achievement it has been for Piastri to win seven grands prix in only his third season of F1.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s obviously an incredible journey so early in his career to fight for a world title. Year three is pretty unprecedented \u2013 I think there was Lewis [Hamilton] but there haven\u2019t been many people that have done this so early in his career,\u201d Webber said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I went for my championship, I was an old dog. I was really old at the end of my career. He\u2019s early in his career, so there\u2019s different nuances there.<\/p>\n \u201cTo see him so young, year three, fighting for a world title quite quickly, it\u2019s pretty surreal and bizarre. A lot of drivers don\u2019t fight for a title once in their career, so you\u2019ve got to try and find the positives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Oscar Piastri desperately works to rebound from his recent Formula One woes, an Australian restaurant chain is doing its part to keep his title hopes alive. After offering free burgers for every time the Australian made the podium, Grill\u2019d burger chain has apologised for putting a \u201ccurse\u201d on the McLaren driver. Piastri has not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[2198,2059,19030,7727,6222,3953,459,10189,16986,9670,225,1500],"class_list":{"0":"post-33175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-apologises","9":"tag-australian","10":"tag-burger","11":"tag-chain","12":"tag-curse","13":"tag-formula","14":"tag-hopes","15":"tag-oscar","16":"tag-piastri","17":"tag-restaurant","18":"tag-season","19":"tag-turn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}