Piastri finds answer to F1 2026 driving reset

Oscar Piastri says he has only recently started to unlock how McLaren’s 2026 Formula 1 car needs to be driven, admitting the scale of the new rules left him slow to adapt through the first half of the season.

The McLaren driver said the latest chassis and power-unit regulations have forced a relearning process unlike recent rule changes, to the point that the cars demand a fundamentally different approach behind the wheel. “Every car is going to need slightly different things on how to go fast, and I feel like in the last few races before the break, I’ve definitely discovered more and more about how the car needs to be driven, how it works, how to go quickly in it, which is not always the most obvious or natural thing,” Piastri said.

He traced that shift back to the Austrian Grand Prix, where he felt he needed to change his method rather than fall back on habits from previous seasons. “In Austria I felt like I really had to stretch myself a bit more and try some new things, and just go about driving in a slightly different way,” he said. Piastri added that “it’s quite easy to just settle into your normal rhythm and do the things you’ve always done, but that doesn’t always work in these cars,” citing Barcelona as a clear example.

That helps explain a subdued campaign by his recent standards. Piastri goes into the summer break with 92 points, only two podiums this season, and none since Miami. He has also been consistently shaded by team-mate Lando Norris in qualifying, with Norris starting ahead in seven of the last eight sessions and Monaco the only exception.

The contrast with last season is stark. In the first half of 2025, Piastri won six races and reached the summer break leading the championship, looking naturally at ease with McLaren’s previous-generation car.

Piastri said this year’s reset has been deeper than a normal technical change. “I think this rule set is just so different in so many ways. During the previous regulation changes, the cars themselves changed quite a bit, in terms of how much downforce they have or how they generate the downforce. But this regulation change has been like a completely fundamental change to how you drive a race car, in some ways.” He added: “It’s been a huge reset for us, for me as well. I’ve had to tackle things in different ways and change the way I go about some things.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the team sees that adaptation still in progress rather than as a ceiling on Piastri’s form. Stella said Piastri is “still getting in tune with these 2026 cars,” describing them as low-grip machines with lower downforce, narrower tyres, active aerodynamics and a near 50-50 split between internal-combustion and electrical power. On that basis, Stella believes the breakthrough Piastri feels he is making can carry into the rest of the year: “I think we will see a very strong Oscar for the second part of the season.”