As Speedcafe reports, Oscar Piastri is facing the longest podium drought of his Formula 1 career as the paddock arrives in Singapore. The Australian has not finished in the top three since Miami in May, a barren run he is eager to break this weekend.
That slump coincides with a testing period for McLaren, which simply could not match the leading teams at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. Even so, Piastri salvaged a sixth-place finish after starting from the pit lane. Teammate Lando Norris could only manage ninth, prompting team principal Andrea Stella to assess McLaren as possessing merely the fourth-fastest car at Sepang.
I’m not sure that’s the full reason why we’ve been a bit uncompetitive. But definitely I think we hoped we’d be a bit stronger in Malaysia than we were. So I think it’s a number of different things,
Asked ahead of the Singapore weekend whether improved execution could pave the way back to the podium, Piastri admitted the problem goes deeper than simple decision-making. “I think so, but I mean that’s a very big part of the job. Both executing and optimising things. We know we’ve not been as competitive as we would have liked the last couple of weekends,” he said, adding that sixth was "more or less all we could have done" in Malaysia.
Despite the overall disappointment, the car's race pace fluctuated wildly, leaving both Piastri and Norris looking like lightning-fast contenders at various points. For the Melburnian, this Jekyll-and-Hyde behavior points directly to the team's hardest recent puzzle. “If you can get the car into the right window, it’s very quick. But we’ve struggled to get it there for a lot of the last two weekends,” he explained.
Questions have naturally surfaced over whether the Sepang circuit characteristics and asphalt conditions dragged McLaren down. While track surface remains a talking point with current-generation machinery, Piastri refused to pin the blame on any single culprit. “I’m not sure that’s the full reason why we’ve been a bit uncompetitive. But definitely I think we hoped we’d be a bit stronger in Malaysia than we were. So I think it’s a number of different things,” he stated.
Now, Marina Bay presents a totally different technical examination, complicated further by a tight schedule. As the venue hosts its first-ever sprint weekend, teams are handed only one practice session to master a track prone to dramatic evolution. Piastri has dug into data from last year's event to prepare, noting that lap times between P1 and P2 only shifted by about half a second. With zero margin for error, the Australian hopes the machinery will suit the layout better and thrust him right back into the fight.
