Andrea Stella has offered some insight into why Oscar Piastri has struggled to match McLaren teammate Lando Norris in 2026, arguing that the Australian is still adapting to the very different demands of this year’s Formula 1 machinery.
Piastri’s 2026 campaign has not followed the trajectory many expected after his emergence as one of Formula 1’s leading title contenders last season.
While Lando Norris has continued to extract the kind of consistency that has kept him at the sharp end of the championship, Piastri has found himself fighting to reproduce the form that made him such a formidable force in 2025.
For McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, however, the explanation is not psychological. Instead, he believes Piastri is confronting a technical challenge created by the characteristics of the new-generation cars – and particularly their reduced grip.
Piastri having to override his instincts
The Australian has already gone a full year without standing on the top step of the podium, with his victory at last year’s Dutch Grand Prix remaining his most recent F1 win.
His 2026 campaign has yielded only two podiums, in Miami and Japan, as Norris has generally proved the more effective McLaren driver.
Stella believes one of the key differences lies in how Piastri naturally responds when the car lacks grip.
“I think last year we had seen already with Oscar that from a technical driving point of view, when the car has this low level of grip, like we saw last year, for instance, in Mexico or in Austin, he needs to adapt the way he drives, the way he thinks, the driving, his expectations,” he told reporters in Zandvoort.
“And this requires a bit of mental effort, which gets him to lose a couple of tenths of a second, because you sort of have to process rather than drive through pure instinct because what happens is what you expect.
“So, I think it’s one of those cases in which you have to adapt your natural driving style to the demand of the car. So, it stays in the space of driving and in the space of the technical side of things.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with any psychological kind of opportunity. This is purely technical.”
That distinction is important for McLaren. Stella is not suggesting Piastri has lost confidence or is struggling to cope with the pressure of competing alongside Norris. Rather, the team boss sees a driver having to consciously adjust his technique at precisely the moments when instinctive reactions would normally be his greatest asset.
A brutal midfield for the slightest mistake
There were signs at Zandvoort that Piastri was beginning to find a better rhythm, despite the final result failing to reflect it.
“I think this weekend, actually, we saw Oscar expressing competitive lap times,” Stella pointed out.
The race itself subsequently became a frustrating exercise. McLaren’s slow pit stop cost Piastri track position while covering George Russell, before the Australian encountered another problem when his hard tyres refused to come alive.
“I think in the race there were two factors that affected Oscar,” Stella explained. “One was the fact, and this is a team responsibility, that when we pitted to cover Russell, actually we lost the position to Russell because of a slow pit stop. And this is up to the team, not up to Oscar.
“And then this second stint on hard tyres, we were not able to switch these tyres on. They stayed permanently in a regime of very, very low grip, which we didn’t see in the first stint. So, there’s a couple of things that we need to work on.
“But I would also add to this that we are in a phase of Formula 1 in which we have at least three teams that are within one tenth of a second. And as soon as things are not optimized, then you may have a very significant positional loss.
“If you’re not optimized, now you are P6. It’s very brutal from this point of view, so I think we just have to keep working with Oscar on all the opportunities.”
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It leaves Piastri with little margin for hesitation. In a field compressed to fractions of a second, the couple of tenths Stella believes the Australian can lose while adapting his driving can mean the difference between fighting at the front and slipping down the order.
Yet McLaren is not sounding the alarm.
Stella sees evidence that Piastri is moving in the right direction and believes there is still plenty of scope for the Australian to recover his best form before the season reaches its conclusion.
“I’m happy with the improvements that I’ve seen during this weekend, and I am sure that there will be even more for the rest of the season,” Stella concluded.
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