That said, the afternoon at the Circuit of the Americas was nothing short of a proper struggle for Oscar Piastri. As Speedcafe reports, the Australian had to scrap for every inch, fighting Mercedes driver George Russell on the opening lap before ultimately keeping him behind in the closing stages to secure seventh.
The opening lap brought immediate drama with a slight contact between Piastri and Russell at Turn 1. Russell later ran beyond the track at Turn 12 and rejoined ahead of the McLaren, earning a five-second penalty from the stewards—a sanction reduced from the usual 10 seconds because it was a first-lap incident involving a fight with the Red Bull of Isack Hadjar. Piastri confirmed to Sky Sports F1 that the initial bump left no lasting damage, noting the machine simply felt consistent with the difficulties experienced all weekend long.
Sunday's grand prix did little to ease the frustration that had already boiled over after qualifying seventh. When pressed on whether the underlying issue stemmed from low-speed handling or a general lack of predictability, Piastri admitted it was a frustrating blend of both. Extraction of performance from this beast remains a terribly tough task, even if the raw speed is theoretically there when everything aligns.
Strategy added another layer of shuffling. McLaren swapped its drivers on lap eight, dropping Piastri behind team-mate Lando Norris due to differing strategies. A switch to hard tyres on lap 16 committed Piastri to a one-stop strategy, forcing him to work his way back through the field by overtaking Liam Lawson and eventually slamming the door shut on Russell as the Mercedes closed in during the dying laps.
Norris faced his own battles further up the road, finishing fifth on a similar one-stop strategy that left him vulnerable to rivals on fresher rubber. Having run as high as second, Norris dropped three places in the final 10 laps as Max Verstappen and Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton surged past. Norris was satisfied with the bold approach despite the late slip, pointing out that the pace on the hard compound was very strong even if he had to push way beyond an ideal scenario while hoping for a Safety Car or a Virtual Safety Car that arrived only after he had already slipped to fifth. A brief late Virtual Safety Car did appear, but P5 was ultimately the maximum achievable result.
Crucially, Norris highlighted McLaren's glaring deficit through the slower corners at Austin—specifically naming Turn 12, 13, and 15—where the team bled almost three tenths of a lap every single lap. That is a punishing amount of time to lose so consistently, and addressing those slow-speed weaknesses will not be easy before the season concludes.
Unfortunately, the mathematical reality of the weekend is heavy. This result leaves McLaren officially out of contention for the constructors' championship, bringing an end to its two-year reign at the top of the standings. In the drivers' standings, Piastri sits seventh on 144 points, trailing sixth-placed Norris, who holds 211 points.
