McLaren identify Oscar Piastri 'signature' key to ongoing F1 struggles

McLaren boss Andrea Stella believes Oscar Piastri's "signature" driving style has translated well into the 2026 F1 car - as he has had to "abandon" some traits.

Piastri claimed seven grand prix wins in 2025 and led the world championship for 15 races in total before the late-season struggles meant he finished third behind team-mate Lando Norris and Max Verstappen. 

The Australian has scored just two grand prix podiums in the all-new 2026 F1 cars, where the machines generate their downforce in a different manner to the ground-effect machines, with the rear of the car also moving around a lot more as opposed to the planted, stable rear of 2025.

Piastri has 138 points to Norris's 201, with it now being 14 grands prix since his last podium finish, a third place in Miami. 

As he continues to work through the issues, his team principal believes that it has simply taken the Melbourne-native longer to learn to adapt his "fast and clean" driving style to the 2026-era cars.

"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," Stella told media, including RacingNews365.

"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."

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Stella on making McLaren easier to drive

Stella has confirmed that McLaren will be bringing a fresh upgrade package towards the end of the season - but does not believe it will make the 2026 machine easier to drive.

"I don't expect that what's coming to the car will improve this characteristic," he added.

"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."