Why Piastri is struggling to match Norris – and McLaren’s intriguing explanation

On 31 August, it will be exactly a year since Oscar Piastri last won a grand prix.

How different the picture looked in Formula 1 back then. Norris slumped through the dunes after his engine failure, Max Verstappen’s sensational comeback still seemed impossible, and Piastri appeared to be taking a major step towards his maiden F1 title.

With his Dutch GP triumph, Piastri extended his championship lead over Norris to 34 points, while Verstappen was still 104 points adrift at that stage. The latter, incidentally, is also a reminder that Norris is far from out of contention in 2026 given he has a 83-point deficit to Kimi Antonelli after victory in this year’s Dutch GP, but that is entirely beside the point.

Since Zandvoort last year, the picture has changed considerably for several reasons. A week after F1’s visit to the Netherlands, controversy erupted in Italy over the papaya rules – and not for the first time. A poor pitstop for Norris and an undercut resulted in Piastri ending up ahead of his team-mate on track, after which he was instructed to give the position back – rightly or wrongly, he did so.

Baku brought the first weekend of 2025 in which nothing went right, after which Piastri struggled with the low-grip conditions in the heat of Austin and at high altitude in Mexico City.

We all know how the title fight ended, although the all-new regulations for 2026 theoretically offered the chance of a complete reset. Technically, everything is different, the cars now demand different things from the drivers, and so everyone effectively started from zero again.

Nevertheless, this has not yet been the season the likeable Australian had hoped for. The year began with a crash on his way to the grid in Melbourne, followed by a double DNS for McLaren in Shanghai. That was still part of the Woking-based team’s difficult start, and at the very next race weekend in Japan, Piastri actually impressed. For a long time, he looked like a serious contender for victory, and even the second place he eventually secured exceeded expectations.

The new season was meant to be a reset, but Piastri's year started with a crash on the reconnaissance lap in Australia and a DNS in China

Photo by: Dom Gibbons / Formula 1 via Getty Images

The subsequent podium finish in Miami also fitted what appeared to be an upward trajectory, but things have gone downhill since Canada – in Montreal itself due to a strategic error by the team and contact with Alexander Albon. Piastri has not returned to the podium since the beginning of May, while McLaren as a whole has gradually found more pace.

Why McLaren sees similarities with Austin and Mexico 2025

Answering the question of exactly why Piastri has been struggling is considerably more difficult in 2026 than it used to be.

On energy-starved circuits in particular, there are factors at play that a driver does not fully – or sometimes at all – have under his control. “It sucks,” was Piastri’s response when I asked him at Spa about the loss of speed on the straights that even McLaren could not explain at the time. It turned out to be related to the ‘self-learning algorithms’ in the power unit, which says everything about F1 in 2026. Piastri expressed himself in very clear terms and was absolutely right to do so.

"Last year we had seen already with Oscar that from a technical driving point of view, when the car has this low level of grip, like we saw last year for instance in Mexico or in Austin, he needs to adapt the way he drives" Andrea Stella

F1 then moved on to two energy-rich circuits – the Hungaroring and Zandvoort – where the flawed 2026 power units mattered considerably less. Piastri’s problems, however, did not disappear. Norris won both races, although it has to be said that Piastri was heavily impeded by Carlos Sainz while leading in Hungary – for which the penalty was remarkably lenient.

At Zandvoort, however, Piastri’s deficit at the chequered flag was more than 32 seconds, prompting him to search for answers afterwards: “Unfortunately it's not the first race where the pace just hasn't been there. Lando has just won the race by quite a lot, so I think the car is in a good place. It's been quick the last two weekends. I think these two tracks suit the car well. Just for whatever reason, I've not been able to get the pace out of it.”

Not long after Piastri made those comments in the media pen, Stella tried to dissect the issue further in McLaren’s hospitality unit, partly because it had been suggested that the problem might be mental – and related to confidence. Stella, however, firmly rejected that suggestion.

“I don't think it has anything to do with any psychological kind of opportunity - this is purely technical,” the Italian said.

Stella is confident McLaren has identified a technical cause of Piastri's woes

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

In fact, he sees similarities between what happened at certain low-grip tracks last year and what is happening more generally this year with cars that have considerably less downforce.

“I think last year we had seen already with Oscar that from a technical driving point of view, when the car has this low level of grip, like we saw last year for instance in Mexico or in Austin, he needs to adapt the way he drives, the way he thinks, and his expectations,” Stella explained.

As a result, the driving is less natural than it was last year, and according to Stella that plays a significant role for Piastri.

“And this requires a bit of mental effort, which gets him to lose a couple of tenths of a second, because you sort of have to process rather than drive through pure instinct,” he said. “I think it's one of those cases in which you have to adapt your natural driving style to the demand of the car. So it stays in the space of driving and in the space of the technical side of things.”

This could also explain why the gap was magnified in Budapest and Zandvoort, tracks where the drivers were less constrained by the power unit and could push closer to the limit. That currently comes more naturally to Norris in the lower-downforce 2026 cars than it does to Piastri.

The 25-year-old from Melbourne is also looking in that direction himself and thinks his current driving style might not always be an optimal match for the cars under F1’s new regulations.

“I think in the driving style, there clearly must be something,” Piastri agreed. “I think in qualifying this weekend I felt much more comfortable. And, through Q1 and Q2, okay, Q3 I didn't quite maximise it, but I was there in the fight. And in the race, the story just wasn't the same at all. So, yeah, I think that's the biggest difference.”

Piastri has been much closer to Norris on qualifying pace than on race pace

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

Why the gap is bigger in races than in qualifying

According to Piastri, that final point is a theme of the season: his deficit to Norris is greater in the races than it is in qualifying, something that is reflected in the data. Figures from data partner Paceteq show that Piastri’s average deficit to Norris during the first half of the season was just 0.068 seconds in qualifying, but 0.227 seconds in the races. At Zandvoort, that gap increased further.

“I think in the races just the rear of the car is very tricky to drive,” Piastri admitted. “I think at certain points in the race today, I felt a lot better with that, but the pace just hasn't been there. Again, it's not the first race this year that that’s been the case. Some have been good; some have been very strong, but there's been too many now that have been really a long way off.”

This is exactly what Piastri and McLaren are now working on together.

For a driver of his calibre, four months without a podium and a year without a victory already feels too long

For a good example of how such a situation can be turned around mid-season, the team does not have to look far. At the beginning of last year, Norris also struggled with his feel for the McLaren, but primarily at the front end and in qualifying. For Piastri, the issue now concerns the rear of the car and primarily his race pace.

Back then, McLaren introduced a revised front suspension that gave Norris more confidence to attack and a better overall feel for the car. Whether specific hardware changes will also be required for Piastri this time remains to be seen, and also depends on whether it is purely a matter of adapting his driving style to the 2026 machinery.

Either way, it is to be hoped that Piastri can rediscover his mojo. For a driver of his calibre, four months without a podium and a year without a victory already feels too long, and many in the paddock would like to see the ever-friendly Australian get a much-needed boost. The good news is that McLaren at least has a competitive package again, so if Piastri finds the right feeling with this highly complex 2026 car at some point, he should immediately be back in contention.

Can Piastri bounce back at Monza?

Photo by: Chris Graythen / Getty Images