Oscar Piastri suffers unwanted deja vu as same McLaren 'story' repeats

Oscar Piastri has explained how his United States Grand Prix was a microcosm of the "story of his year" as he struggled to seventh place.

Piastri finished over 20s behind fellow one-stopping McLaren team-mate Lando Norris in Austin after letting the reigning champion through in the early stages; such was his lack of pace in the MCL40. 

Switching his strategy from a two-stop to a one-stop, Piastri eventually came home 52.674s behind winner Kimi Antonelli as his wait for a podium finish extended to 15 races since third in Miami. 

The Australian has struggled with the feel of the new cars, with the required driving style at odds with his super-smooth style as the 2026 machines are required to be hustled through corners - although both Piastri and Norris have said that the car is difficult to extract performance from. 

When asked if there were any issues in his race, Piastri told media, including RacingNews365, that: "It was slow, and I don't have any more than that at the moment.

"When [Isack] Hadjar came out of the pits, he looked like he had an issue, and his deployment was a bit all over the place, so I was catching him in awkward places and lost a fair bit of time there.

"And then I was defending from George for the rest of the race, but on top of that, the pace clearly wasn't very good, so there is plenty to try and understand."

With the Mercedes proving quicker in race-trim than the McLaren, Piastri then expressed his surprise at keeping Russell behind - taking that as a "positive" from the race.

"I was a bit surprised that I could keep him behind, to be honest, but I am glad that I could," he said.

"Obviously, I don't think either of us really wants to be battling for seventh, so it was a tricky weekend, but at least that was a bit of a positive."

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Piastri's sense of deja vu

Turning to his wider issues in the MCL40, Piastri could not immediately explain why he had struggled so badly in the race in Austin, as he was always trying to fix "one place" or another.

"It seemed like a bit of a struggle in various places, and I could fix one place and not another, and it was just a bit of a struggle, to be honest," he said.

"So I think it just points to how tricky it is to get performance out of the car. 

"I could achieve something decent one lap, but then trying to repeat it was very, very tough, and that's been the story of the weekend, and in some ways, the story of the year."