McLaren seeks to solve Piastri's mystery

Piastri's failure in the 2026 Formula One season has forced McLaren to rethink his driving style and the design of the next generation car.

According to Sport Se report and quoted by Ambassador Arjan, McLaren team manager Andrea Stella believes that one of the main reasons for Oscar Piaster's performance decline in the 2026 Formula One season is the difficulty of adapting the driving style of this Australian driver to the characteristics of the team's new car. According to him, Piaster's clean, precise and repeatable driving style, which was considered one of his strengths last season, is not as compatible with the MCL40 car as the previous generation of McLaren cars.

Piastri won seven Grands Prix in the 2025 season and spent a significant part of the season at the top of the drivers' championship, but eventually lost the title race to teammate Lando Norris. However, his circumstances have been different this season. The Australian driver has only finished on the podium twice so far, with his last top-three appearance coming back in May at Miami.

Speaking to the media in Singapore, Stella explained that the changes in the new generation cars have forced drivers to apply more pressure to the car in order to record faster times and have more intense inputs through the steering and control of the car. According to him, this change is one of the factors that caused Piastri to lose a part of his competitive edge compared to Norris.

The manager of the McLaren team said: In order for the car to be able to record a good lap time, a lot of effort must be made. This car needs more intensity and intensity in the driver's inputs; A level that is much higher than last season.

He added that drivers needed time to understand these features and adapt to them. Stella went on to emphasize that the word "comfortable" may not be an accurate description, because it's not just about feeling comfortable behind the wheel, but the driver needs to understand how to get better performance from the car.

Stella said: This is one of the reasons why Oscar seems a little less competitive compared to Lando. We've talked about what happened to Oscar and I've always said there was a technical issue. Oscar had to learn how to make the car do certain things and let go of the notion that driving fast necessarily means driving clean.

These comments point to the difference between Piastri's driving style in the previous generation of cars and the needs of the new McLaren. Piastre was known in the past for his regular, precise and predictable driving; Features that allowed the team to examine his performance data more consistently and use it to improve the car's settings.

However, according to Stella, the combination of these features in the MCL40 does not always yield the desired result. He explained: "When we saw Oscar fast in the past, his distinguishing feature was this elegance in driving." His data was really good, his performance was repeatable and he was quick at the same time, but with this car, it seems that all these qualities come together very rarely. This issue requires a lot of work from drivers.

McLaren's new upgrades won't be an immediate fix

McLaren has confirmed that it will install a package of technical updates to its cars before the end of the current season. Still, Stella doesn't expect these changes alone to fix Piastre's or Norris' problems or make the MCL40 noticeably easier to drive.

He said: I don't expect that the changes that are going to be added to the car will improve this feature.

Stella believes that to solve the problem, more fundamental measures are needed than simply increasing the downward force of the car. This force, which sticks the car to the surface of the track, helps to increase the grip in the corners, but the McLaren boss believes that the limited changes in this department will not be enough to solve the main problem.

"I think we need something more fundamental than just adding downforce," he explained. What we are going to do in future races is without fundamentally changing other aspects of the car. We are following this part of the work in the long term and especially for the MCL41, the car of the 2027 season.

In this way, McLaren is not only relying on short-term upgrades to improve the performance of its drivers and is looking for part of the solution in the design of the next generation car. For Piastri, the main challenge is to find a way to adapt his driving style to the needs of the MCL40 before the end of the season; A car that has not been able to bring him the same level of success as last season.