Karun Chandhok has drawn a fascinating comparison between George Russell and Oscar Piastri, suggesting the Mercedes driver shares a key weakness that once derailed Piastri's championship hopes. The issue? Both drivers struggle to find their rhythm on low-grip circuits—a problem that could prove costly in a tight title race.

Last season, Piastri looked like a genuine contender, holding a commanding 34-point lead with just 10 races remaining. But by the time the checkered flag fell on the season, he was 13 points behind his McLaren teammate Lando Norris. McLaren boss Andrea Stella didn't blame pressure for the collapse. Instead, he pointed to a technical flaw: Piastri simply couldn't drive naturally on slicker tracks like Azerbaijan, Mexico, and Brazil.

Fast forward to this season, and Russell seems to be battling the same demons. After qualifying four-tenths behind pole-sitter Kimi Antonelli at the Miami Grand Prix—a race Russell himself called one of his weaker venues—he opened up to Chandhok on Sky Sports about the struggle. "I'm quite a smooth, precise driver, and that's always been my style," Russell explained. "On these tracks, you've got to be happy with the car sliding. I like the car on the edge, but this is like you've got a set of 200-lap-old tyres on the car, and it's just sliding, oversteering, understeering."

He continued, painting a vivid picture of the challenge: "It's so hot, tyre pressures are high, the grip's really low, so it doesn't actually feel that pleasant. Whereas you go to tracks like Saudi, and the grip's super high—it feels mega to drive, and that's where I excel."

Chandhok, a former F1 driver turned pundit, immediately saw the parallels. "It sounds like Oscar and Lando," he said on Sky Sports. "This is what Oscar was saying: he's super smooth and struggles at low-grip tracks. At least you know where the weakness is."

While Russell has had legitimate excuses for dropping points earlier this season in China and Japan, Miami offered no such cover. This time, he was simply outperformed without any clear mitigating factors. Speaking on the F1 Show, Chandhok drove the point home: "You could have copy and pasted Oscar from Austin, Mexico last year. It was basically the same thing. What happens on these lower-grip circuits is..."

For fans and analysts alike, this revelation adds a layer of intrigue to the championship battle. Can Russell overcome this Achilles' heel, or will history repeat itself? One thing's for sure: on low-grip Sundays, even the smoothest drivers can find themselves sliding off the pace.