Oscar Piastri is struggling in 2026 to regain the level that allowed him to establish himself as one of the main title contenders last season, but for Andrea Stella the reason is not psychological.
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The McLaren boss believes the Australian still needs to adapt his driving style to the very different characteristics of the new cars, particularly their lower level of grip.
While Lando Norris continues to show great consistency and to fully exploit the McLaren, Piastri is having a much more difficult campaign. His win at the 2025 Dutch Grand Prix remains his last victory in Formula 1, meaning now a whole year without a win.
Piastri has to go against his instincts
This season, the Australian has only been on the podium twice, in Miami and Japan. A drop in form that contrasts with his 2025 performances, but which Stella attributes primarily to the technical demands of the new cars.
According to the team principal, some difficulties had already appeared last season on circuits where the level of grip was particularly low: “I think we had already noticed last year with Oscar that, from a technical point of view and in terms of driving, when the car offers so little grip, as we saw for example in Mexico or Austin, he has to adapt his way of driving, his way of thinking about his driving and his expectations,” explains Stella.
This adaptation forces Piastri to think more about his actions instead of relying entirely on his automatisms: “It requires a certain mental effort, which makes him lose a few tenths of a second, because you have to somehow analyze what is happening rather than drive purely instinctively, when the car reacts exactly as expected.”
For Stella, the problem is therefore clearly identified: “It’s one of those cases where you have to adapt your natural driving style to the demands of the car. So it remains in the realm of driving and technique. I don’t think it has anything to do with a psychological aspect. It’s purely technical. ”
Zandvoort showed progress
McLaren therefore does not consider that Piastri is suffering from a lack of confidence or the pressure exerted by Norris’s performances. The Australian simply has to modify certain automatisms to exploit a car whose behavior corresponds less naturally to his style.
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Despite a disappointing result, Stella believes the last Dutch Grand Prix brought encouraging signs: “I think at Zandvoort, we actually saw Oscar set competitive lap times.”
His race was however compromised by several factors that did not depend solely on him. McLaren notably made a stop that was too slow when covering George Russell, which cost Piastri a position: “ There were two factors that affected Oscar during the race. The first, and it’s the team’s responsibility, is that when we stopped to cover Russell, we ultimately lost the position to him because of a slow stop. That’s down to the team, not Oscar.”
The situation then became more complicated with the hard tires: “During the second stint on hard tires, we failed to get them working. They remained permanently in a window offering very, very little grip, which we had not noticed during the first stint. So there are several elements we need to work on.”
A few tenths can cost several positions
The problem is all the more important because the gaps have tightened considerably. According to Stella, three teams now operate within a window of about one tenth of a second: “As soon as everything is not perfectly optimized, you can lose a lot of positions. If you are not optimized, you are now sixth. It’s very brutal from this point of view. So we just have to keep working with Oscar on all possibilities for improvement. ”
The few tenths that Piastri can lose when he has to consciously adapt his driving thus become particularly costly. A small hesitation is now enough to turn a fight for the top places into a start from the middle of the pack.
However, McLaren is not worried. Stella considers that the progress observed at Zandvoort demonstrates that Piastri is beginning to better understand the demands of this generation of cars.
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