Andrea Stella: Oscar Piastri Must Abandon 'Clean' Style to Master 2026 McLaren

Oscar Piastri is facing a steep learning curve with McLaren’s 2026 machinery, struggling to maintain the championship-challenging form he displayed last year. Team Principal Andrea Stella suggests the Australian must make an uncomfortable psychological shift: abandoning the precision and cleanliness that previously defined his speed to extract performance from the current car.

Why it matters:

This struggle marks a significant reversal for Piastri, who won seven Grands Prix and led the championship for much of 2025. The difficulty in adapting highlights how the 2026 regulation changes have fundamentally altered the relationship between driver input and car response, effectively turning Piastri's greatest strength—his consistency and precision—into a tactical liability.

The details:

• Performance Gap: While Lando Norris has established a dominant intra-team advantage with consecutive wins in Hungary and the Netherlands, Piastri has managed only two podiums this season, with his last occurring in May.
• Technical Shift: The 2026 cars feature a fundamental change in aerodynamic generation and a rear end that is noticeably less planted than the previous ground-effect era.
• Driving Style Clash: Stella notes that the current McLaren requires a level of "intensity" and "force" in driving inputs that contradicts Piastri's naturally clean and repeatable data.
• The Trade-off: To regain competitiveness, Piastri must accept that driving fast in the 2026 car no longer equates to driving clean.

What's next:

While McLaren is preparing an upgrade package for the final stages of the campaign, Stella has cautioned that adding downforce will not resolve this underlying handling characteristic. A fundamental rethink of the car's behavior is likely reserved for the 2027 MCL41. For now, the burden falls on Piastri to manually rewire his instincts and adapt to a more aggressive style to close the gap to Norris.