Oscar Piastri says McLaren are “not standing still” as he targets improvement before Azerbaijan GP

Oscar Piastri has said he is still making progress in the tricky 2026 season, praising McLaren for their continued search for solutions and insisting the team is “not standing still” as it looks for more performance. The Australian, who challenged for the title in 2025, has found it harder this year to match teammate Lando Norris, who converted effective team development into Grand Prix victories in Hungary and the Netherlands.

Piastri and McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella have both acknowledged that Piastri’s natural driving style does not align as well with the new generation of cars. Speaking to the media, Piastri said that improvement is not always straightforward, explaining that some approaches work while others do not, and pointing to the limits of extracting lap time when the car is “quick eventually” but difficult to get consistently around.

Following Piastri’s eighth-place finish in the Spanish Grand Prix, Stella said McLaren would shift more engineering resources to support him. Piastri added that, beyond any single change, the fundamentals of this year’s cars are different in ways that require constant adaptation, describing the challenge as finding solutions that vary from moment to moment rather than settling on one direction that works every time.

Piastri’s next opportunity to find further performance is the Azerbaijan Grand Prix at the Baku City Circuit. He said his relationship with the track has been a “love-hate” mix, citing what he described as his best race ever at Baku in 2024 and also referring to a difficult weekend last season that included a crash on the opening lap.

Written by Vancouver Television Sports Desk