Oscar Piastri has officially denied the widespread speculation that McLaren “sabotaged” his 2025 Formula 1 campaign.
Last season, the Australian was the name on everyone’s mind for the 2025 World Championship. With 6 wins, 284 points and a convincing gap over both Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, Piastri entered the summer break as a clear favourite for his maiden title.
However, the 24-year-old saw a major dip in form when F1 returned from its month-long hiatus. Piastri traded his consistent wins and podiums for several uncharacteristic errors and DNFs.
Unfortunately for Piastri, his run of bad luck coincided with arguably Norris’ career-best form and a fast-charging Verstappen. Ultimately, Piastri fell from first to third within weeks.
McLaren’s infamous ‘papaya rules’ were highly scrutinised throughout the season, with many calling on the Woking-based team to choose a number one driver. However, the team maintained that this racing philosophy worked best for them and allowed Norris and Piastri to have a fair shot at the title.
But this led many Australians to believe McLaren was sabotaging the Melbourne-born athlete.
The claims were so prevalent that they even made it to Australian parliament. In a viral clip, Nationals senator Matt Canavan asked members of his local parliament for their opinion on McLaren’s treatment of Piastri.
“Yeah, I saw, and I think, for me, the takeaway from that was just how closely everyone was supporting it more than anything else,” Piastri told 7News when asked about the clip.
Piastri believes McLaren did its best in 2025
Despite laughing it off, Oscar Piastri clarified that he believes his team looked after him to the best of their ability last season. Whilst the result did not go the way he, and most of Australia, had hoped for, he cleared the team of any ill-intention.
“There were certainly no bad intentions last year,” Piastri said.
“I think as a team we know that there’s things that we could have done a better job of, things we could have done differently, and I know that as well.
But, you know, at no point were there any bad intentions or certainly no sabotage as I’ve seen around a few times.”
The McLaren driver highlighted that whilst he is still searching for his maiden title, 2025 was a significant year of learning for himself and his side of the garage. Making him confident for the new era of racing, that begins in a few weeks in his home town of Melbourne.
“That’s part of racing, some things go as you want, some things don’t,” Piastri emphasised.
“We’ve worked very hard on trying to tidy up some of the things we didn’t get right last year. I’m confident that we can do a better job in 2026 on the whole.”
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