As The Race reports, Oscar Piastri is having a genuinely brutal time with the 2026 McLaren, watching team-mate Lando Norris pull away while a very specific set of problems neuters what team boss Andrea Stella calls his 'superpower'. While qualifying numbers look close on paper with a 16-8 deficit and an average gap of 0.040s, the grands prix tell a completely different story. Austin brought more pain as Piastri crossed the line 22 seconds behind Norris after running on the exact same strategy. It is a recurring nightmare following similar deficits in Barcelona at 35 seconds and Zandvoort at 32 seconds, prompting the driver to admit there have been too many weekends running a long way off the pace.
When asked about his race speed in Austin, Piastri was blunt: "It was slow. I don't have any more than that at the moment." He detailed getting caught in awkward places when Isack Hadjar emerged from the pits with deployment issues, before spending the remainder of the afternoon defending against George Russell. But the underlying issue was stark: the pace simply was not there. The weekend-long struggle was evident early. While Piastri officially outqualified Norris by setting a faster legal lap, he was actually 0.424s slower than Norris's fastest Q3 effort which had been deleted for track limits. The deficit was so obvious by Saturday that McLaren seriously considered ordering team orders before the race because Stella noted Lando was clearly faster all weekend.
The 2026 McLaren is a knife-edge machine, and Norris has simply managed its brutal traits far better. The contrast is glaring when looking at McLaren's purple patch either side of the summer break, where Norris would have taken three wins out of four if not for a badly timed virtual safety car in Madrid. Meanwhile, Piastri has not sniffed a podium since Miami back in early May. Budapest offered his best chance before unfortunate contact while lapping Carlos Sainz ruined his race, though even then he lacked Norris's raw speed. McLaren F1 CEO Zak Brown noted in Singapore that Oscar was showing progress and feeling more confident, and Piastri himself feels he has conquered some early-season weaknesses. Yet new flaws keep popping up to produce the exact same frustrating end result.
The root of it all goes back to how these cars demand to be driven. Stella explained that Piastri's natural superpower is building speed lap by lap once he establishes references, but Austin presented conditions where every single lap differed. That environment hits Piastri hard, whereas Norris thrives by adapting brilliantly as the car slides. Earlier in the season, the struggle was adapting to the intense driving inputs required by the 2026 power units. Stella pointed out that driving this beast fast requires forcing the car into maneuvers, meaning speed no longer equals a clean lap. That clashes completely with Piastri's traditional signature of clean, repeatable, data-friendly speed.
None of the team's upgrades have widened the car's painfully narrow operating window. Piastri noted that the updates are not making the machine any easier to drive, which remains their biggest headache. With the team prioritizing raw speed over an accommodating setup, the car is certainly not going to bend to Piastri's preferences this year. That leaves the driver facing a long winter of hard work to figure out how to unlock this generation of regulations and consistently match Norris when it counts.
