McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has identified what he believes is the root of Oscar Piastri‘s ongoing struggles to find success in the 2026 season.
Stella said that he believes Piastri’s ‘signature’ clean driving style has not matched the MCL40 as well as its predecessor. The Australian earned seven Grand Prix victories in 2025, leading the Driver’s Championship for much of the season before losing out to teammate Lando Norris.
However so far in 2026, Piastri has only two podiums to his name, with the most recent being in Miami back in May.
Stella thinks that Piastri is simply taking longer to adapt his driving style to the new era of cars, as he explained to the media in Singapore.
“The car needs quite a lot of effort to deliver lap time, and it requires a level of intensity in the driving input, which is much superior to last year,” he said.
“This is something that took some time for the drivers to get comfortable. Well, comfortable is wrong, but to get to understand, and it’s also one of the reasons why Oscar almost looks like he lost some of the competitiveness compared to Lando.
“We were discussing what is happening with Oscar, and I’ve always said that that was a technical matter. Oscar just needed to understand how to force the car to do some things and sort of abandon the fact that driving fast will not necessarily mean driving clean.
“Instead, probably the signature of Oscar, when we have seen him fast in the past, was that he was clean. It was really good data to see.
“It was very repeatable, and it was fast. With this car, all these things together don’t seem to happen very often. So it’s a lot of work for the drivers.”
Stella not expecting upgrades miracles for either Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris
McLaren has confirmed that it will bring a new upgrade package at some point before the end of the season, but Stella does not believe this will make it easier to drive.
“I don’t expect that what’s coming to the car will improve this characteristic.
“I think we need something more fundamental than simply adding some downforce to the car, like it’s happening in the coming races, without fundamentally changing some further aspect, which we are addressing longer term, I would say with the MCL41 for 2027.”
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