Oscar Piastri explains why Suzuka P2 meant more

Oscar Piastri said his second place in the 2026 Japanese Grand Prix meant more to him than many of his wins because he felt McLaren had extracted everything available from the Suzuka weekend.

Speaking on the High Performance podcast, the McLaren driver said the result would look unremarkable in retrospect. “You look at it in the history books in 10 years, and it'll say, ‘OK, I finished second and at this point I've won nine F1 races.’ But honestly, I would probably put that second place higher in my list of personal achievements than probably 50% of those wins that I've had so far.”

For Piastri, the value of the result was in the execution rather than the finishing position. He said he “didn’t leave anything on the table” at Suzuka, adding that he got “the absolute most” out of himself in practice, came “very close to the absolute most” in qualifying, and then got “the absolute most” from the race. “Me and the car and the team, that was all we had,” he said. “And we were quick enough to finish second.”

That left him satisfied despite a sizeable gap to the winner. Piastri finished 13.7 seconds behind Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes, while noting that “the history books will say I got beaten by 15 seconds.” His point was that Formula 1 can hide the quality of a weekend behind a raw margin, which is why, he said, drivers have to stay disciplined about what they judge themselves on.

The context made Suzuka more significant. Piastri arrived in Japan after a difficult opening to 2026. He was unable to start his home Australian Grand Prix after a crash on the reconnaissance laps, then both he and teammate Lando Norris hit electrical problems before the race in China. With only three points scored in the Chinese sprint, he reached Suzuka on 21 points and sixth in the drivers’ standings after the first three rounds.

That is why he ranked the result so highly. Piastri said he left Suzuka happier than after about half the races he has won because his measure of success is whether he has done everything within his control. “As long as you can leave the weekend knowing that I did absolutely everything I could in my control, that's good enough for me.”