Lando Norris has been hit with a major "pyschological" blow after surprising defeat from teammate Oscar Piastri.
According to Racing 365, former F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve believes Oscar Piastri's pole position at the Dutch Grand Prix was "psychologically" significant in his battle with Lando Norris.
Norris entered qualifying at Zandvoort as the narrow favourite for pole, having topped every practice session. However, he was defeated by Piastri.
The championship leader set a new lap record to secure pole by just 0.012s ahead of his teammate, despite being up to two-tenths off the pace for much of the weekend.
Discussing Norris having come out strong across all three practice sessions, Villeneuve told Sky F1, "He did, but we've been talking about the championship and what games are being played or not, and the effect it has. And this is important, all weekend, free practice, all through qualifying, Lando kept doing perfect lap after perfect lap."
"And Piastri was a tenth and a half, two tenths behind, that was a huge gap as a team-mate. And now just in that last lap that counted a few hundredths left in the first sector, and Piastri does his best lap when it matters. He got all the balls in together. Very important, psychologically," he added.
Furthermore, Piastri will now begin weekend race from grid one on Circuit Zandvoort ahead of McLaren teammate Norris.
