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It has been a genuinely brutal start to the year for Oscar Piastri. The campaign opened with a DNS right in front of his home crowd in Australia, was immediately followed by another DNS in China, and has dealt out massive hurdles ever since as the Australian grapples with McLaren's MCL40.
Looking at the standings, the contrast is stark. Piastri sits seventh in the Drivers' Championship, trailing teammate Lando Norris by 94 points. While Norris has collected three wins this year—the latest coming last weekend in Sao Paulo—Piastri has managed just two podium finishes, both secured back in rounds three and four. This comes right on the heels of 2025, when the then 25-year-old was locked in a brutal three-way title fight that went down to the final race before Norris took the crown and Max Verstappen settled for second.
Regulation changes shook up the order, dropping McLaren from back-to-back Constructors' Championship winners as Mercedes emerged as the class of the field. But for Piastri, the technical mountain to climb has been deeply personal. Adapting his natural driving style to a machine that demands perfection has proven far from straightforward. As Team Principal Andrea Stella noted, Piastri has not been able to rely on pure instinct in certain conditions, forcing him to fundamentally tweak how he drives.
Smaller cars, radically different tyres, and a machine that forces you right past the edge just to salvage things have defined his adaptation process. When an athlete has to think that intensely about every micro-adjustment, finding optimum performance becomes an entirely different beast. Yet, the tide appears to be turning. Coming off a P5 finish in Singapore, McLaren CEO Zak Brown pointed out during the Team Principals' Press Conference that the Australian is feeling more confident and is back to the driver he knows.
Despite the points gap and the technical trials, the atmosphere inside the squad remains resolute. Development has always been a core strength for McLaren, and the team is pulling together with absolute determination to hunt down Mercedes. For Piastri himself, redefining success away from sheer results has been key to keeping his head down. Improvement rather than perfection has become the metric, anchored by downtime away from the circuit with his girlfriend, watching TV, and playing video games and his simulator.
Whether these grueling lessons in 2026 will forge a sharper, more adaptable driver remains to be seen, but the foundations are being laid. The top four teams have ebbed and flowed, and the competition has undoubtedly raised the bar. But as the factory pushes to climb back to the top, Piastri is banking on the hard miles of this season to leave him better equipped for whatever machine lands in his hands next.
F1
F1
