Oscar Piastri has admitted that he doesn’t “have any answers” at the moment after being surprised by his lack of pace in the Dutch Grand Prix, a race he labelled as “disappointing” following his P6 finish. The McLaren driver sits seventh in the 2026 Drivers’ Standings with 92 points, reflecting a challenging campaign that has featured more lows than highs.
Zandvoort Struggles and Post-Race Frustration for Driver #81
The weekend at Zandvoort initially offered glimmers of promise for the young Australian. Following a red-flag stoppage, Piastri bolted on the hard tyres and pulled off an impressive overtake on Mercedes driver George Russell at the restart. However, according to race reports, a slow pit stop unravelled that early momentum. From there, his MCL40 drifted backward, culminating in both Ferraris breezing past him as he salvaged a lonely sixth place.
Pushed by Sky Sports F1 to break down where the grand prix unraveled, Piastri didn’t hide his bewilderment:
“Disappointing, obviously. I think the first lap was good, or after the red flag was good, and then the first stint felt okay, and then after that I had nothing.”
Sky Sports
He added that he was completely in the dark regarding the sudden drop-off:
“I don’t know why – plenty to look into.”
When pressed further on the root cause, Piastri pointed squarely at overall speed, noting, “I don’t really have any more answers than that at the moment.”
In a separate interview, he answered “yes”
when asked if his lack of pace came as a shock—particularly given the dominant speed of teammate Lando Norris—while conceding that he “unfortunately”
remained clueless as to why the gap existed.
Contrasting Fortunes Inside the McLaren Garage
Piastri’s struggles at Zandvoort highlighted a stark intra-team divide against Norris, who converted his pole position into a second consecutive Grand Prix victory. Norris currently sits fifth in the standings, holding a 26-point advantage over his teammate. When asked by reporters whether the team’s successful introduction of recent upgrades on the MCL40 offered him hope for a turnaround, the nine-time race winner answered cautiously: “Yeah, definitely, I hope so, but at the moment it’s been pretty challenging.”
Despite the driver’s self-critical assessment, McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella jumped to his defense. Stella remarked that Piastri’s final classification was “not a fair reflection of the competitiveness he demonstrated throughout the weekend,”
expressing firm confidence that there is “more potential that we can extract”
from the #81 car.
A Rollercoaster 2026 Season So Far
The Dutch Grand Prix weekend fits neatly into a broader narrative that Piastri has battled across the opening 11 rounds of the 2026 championship. Speaking to Dutch outlet RacingNews365 during the summer break, the Australian acknowledged experiencing “more lows than highs”
alongside McLaren this season, pointing to early reliability hurdles and initial difficulties understanding the Mercedes power unit.
Aside from missing starts entirely in the Australian and Chinese Grand Prix weekends, Piastri has largely chased his British teammate’s pace, outperforming Norris in pure race pace only at the Austrian GP where he secured a fourth-place finish. Reflecting on a turbulent first half of the year—which included an unfortunate retirement due to gearbox trouble in Hungary following contact with Carlos Sainz—Piastri stressed his desire for consistency:
“For me, there were also good moments, some not so good moments, and pretty much everything in between. I want to be able to step up and be a bit more consistent at my highest level, and hopefully we can do that in the second half of the year.”
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