A year without a win – The ugly statistics of Oscar Piastri’s 2026 F1 season

Agosto 31, 2026 lojamais44@gmail.com

31 August 2025. Oscar Piastri won the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, extending his championship lead over McLaren team-mate Lando Norris to 34 points. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was 104 points behind and seemingly out of contention.

Over the remainder of that season Piastri didn’t win another grand prix and ultimately slipped to third in the standings, a slide accompanied by a flurry of unfounded speculation that his own team was sabotaging his chances.

Aside from podiums at Suzuka and Miami in the spring, he hasn’t come close to winning a grand prix either over the course of a troubled 2026 season. What is more worrying – though naturally the conspiracy theorists would have an easy explanation to hand – is that Norris has outperformed him, winning at the Hungaroring and Zandvoort as well as the Miami sprint.

Piastri’s problems begin in qualifying and continue in the races. The quali match-up is now 22-7 in favour of Norris since Zandvoort last season. He has six pole positions and nine fastest laps to his name, as well as nine grand prix wins, but hasn’t looked likely to improve on that tally so far this season.

Part of the issue is baked into the McLaren MCL40’s concept. Piastri has traditionally struggled on low-grip tracks where his relatively conventional driving style tends to generate spikes in the surface temperature of the rear tyres as they slide.

Norris has proved the more adaptable of the two drivers. His style of overlapping the brake and throttle as he approaches the corner at a shallower trajectory encourages the front wheels to help the rear rotate the car as they come to a peak of lateral grip. But for this to work he needs to have a good feel for that grip through the front axle, as well as confidence that the rear end will play its part.

Piastri’s more linear movements on and off the brake and throttle tend to make the rear end slide more when the grip is lower, a tendency exacerbated by this year’s cars having less downforce overall.

McLaren has struggled to add efficient downforce around the rear of the MCL40 because it opted for the shortest permitted wheelbase. That helped find easy weight savings but it gives less floor area on which to add strakes and slots to condition the airflow.

Piastri laboured to sixth in Zandvoort as his teammate won

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

Small time losses induced through rear-end slides tend to compound through the lap, depending on the circuit layout, since Piastri has to use more electrical power compared with Norris to get back up to speed. This can leave him with a lower state of charge which costs top speed on the straights.

Recent upgrades have put McLaren back in contention for race wins after an underwhelming start to the season, where Piastri didn’t even make the grid in Australia and China owing to power unit problems. But the behaviour of the rear axle continues to be a problem, especially in races, where he tends to suffer more degradation than Norris.

That was evident last time out in the Dutch GP, where Norris beat championship leader Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes in a straight fight while Piastri was delayed by a slow pitstop and rear-tyre issues, finishing 32s later in sixth place.

“In general I’ve been much happier with the car this weekend, which has been good,” Piastri said in Zandvoort.

“I feel like it’s been back into the normal kind of rhythm of having strengths in some corners, weaknesses in others, rather than just trying to find time everywhere, which has been nice.

“We still probably lack a little bit of downforce compared to some of the others, or at least some balance characteristics. I think we rely a lot on the grip from the new tyres to help our balance.

“Maybe we pay the price a bit more when the tyres get worse, but that’s just a guess.”