Oscar Piastri has opened up about how the 2026 Formula 1 season has pushed him out of his comfort zone and forced him to change his driving style.
After a championship fight that raged throughout 2025, Piastri looked like a prime contender to come into the new regulations as a title rival.
However, 2026 dealt the Australian a very different hand. At his home grand prix in the season opener, Piastri crashed on the reconnaissance lap. He suffered reliability issues at the Chinese Grand Prix that saw him unable to start the race.
A notch down from expectations
In Suzuka, he finally broke through the bad luck and managed to take a podium finish. Although a better result could have been on the table if it weren’t for a poorly timed Safety Car.
It’s been a difficult season since Japan for the Australian. The podium in Suzuka was one of just two times he’s made it into the top three. The other came in Miami.
Piastri admitted that the team performance hasn’t been where they expected or wanted it to be.
“I think our kind of general level of performance has not been quite where we want it to be, obviously,” Piastri said in an interview with McLaren’s official website.
“We’ve come close to some victories and had a few podiums, which has been good, but we obviously set the bar pretty high last year.
“We’ve also had a fair share of issues, whether it be difficult races or reliability issues. So definitely up and down.”
2026 brings a massive overhaul of regulations, with a switch from the previous downforce-defined era to a 50/50 split between the electric and combustion engines. It has brought with it a different way of approaching each corner, with drivers focused on saving up their energy deployment.
New regulations
The Australian spoke about how these changes have affected his approach to the season, with Barcelona representing the first time that Piastri was really hit with how different he’d have to approach the year.
“We’re having to find so many new things and new ways of extracting performance out of the car and ourselves,” Piastri explained.
“It’s quite easy to just settle into your normal rhythm and do the things you’ve always done, but that doesn’t always work in these cars – I think Barcelona was definitely an example of that.
“In Austria I felt like I really had to stretch myself a bit more and try some new things, and just go about driving in a slightly different way.”
In Barcelona, Piastri finished fifth, which on paper isn’t the worst result. Although the results left him a minute off the race lead, and significantly 35 seconds off the pace of his teammate.
Things change quickly from track to track under new regulations. In Austria, Piastri took the chequered flag ahead of Norris, despite Austria traditionally being one of his better circuits.
“Austria was a good one,” Piastri reflected.
“The result was reasonable, with the P4, but also in terms of the turnaround from Barcelona and just how I felt the weekend went.
“Barcelona was definitely one of the more difficult weekends of the year, and I had to learn a lot from that one and improve quite a lot, and I feel like Austria was really good: to bounce back and put some of that learning into place.
“I think the good results have been one thing, but I feel like I’ve also learned a lot about how I can improve myself as a driver, even if the results don’t always show it.”
The importance of upgrades
One of the key aspects of the 2026 season has been the introduction and process of bringing upgrades. The quick turnaround for teams has been closing the performance gap to Mercedes out front, with Ferrari leading the charge of upgrades and taking two victories in Barcelona and Silverstone.
McLaren have also taken that step with bringing upgrades, and Piastri believed that the team are taking the right steps to fight at the front heading into the summer break.
“Every car is going to need slightly different things on how to go fast, and I feel like in the last few races before the break, I’ve definitely discovered more and more about how the car needs to be driven, how it works, how to go quickly in it, which is not always the most obvious or natural thing,” he said.
“Whether that be us as drivers getting used to them, or through the work that has been done across drivers, teams, the FIA and F1 to tweak and improve them as we’ve gone through the year.
“However, looking back at the halfway point, we still have work to do.
“While we can’t just make the regulations and the racing exactly how we want it as drivers – as that may make it quite boring for everyone else – there are still tweaks we can make to improve from where we are now.
“I am looking forward to seeing what we can do with the second part of the season and into next year.”
No doubt the order will continue to shift as the season progresses and the next season begins, with every race offering drivers and teams a chance to learn from their mistakes and their upgrades.
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