The FIA found Oscar Piastri’s McLaren MCL40 in compliance with the F1 2026 regulations following an “extensive physical inspection” after the Spanish Grand Prix.

Piastri finished in eighth place, with Kimi Antonelli winning the Grand Prix ahead of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris.

Oscar Piastri’s McLaren passes FIA inspection after Spanish Grand Prix

Ahead of this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, it has emerged that Piastri’s McLaren was the car picked for inspection after the race at the Madring.

The inspection was part of the FIA’s routine post-race checks, which see a car that is classified in the top 10 randomly chosen for a further examination.

The MCL40 was found in compliance with the technical regulations.

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After the race in Madrid, car number 63 was randomly chosen among the top ten cars for more extensive physical inspection,” read a note by Jo Bauer, the FIA’s Formula 1 Technical Delegate, read.

“Subject to these physical inspections were the following items concerning the front suspension assembly:
Front corner dampers.
Suspension fairings.
Suspension members geometry.
Suspension uprights and wheel hubs.

“Identification of sensors and their connections to the FIA standard ECU.

“Data logging of signals. Homologation status of the sensors. FIA-F1-DOC-001 submissions.

“All inspected items were found to be in compliance with the 2026 Formula One Technical Regulations.”

After fighting for the world title last year before a late-season slump dropped him to third in the standings, Piastri is struggling to match his teammate Norris this season.

While the Briton has two Grand Prix victories and 186 points, Piastri has yet to win a race and trails his teammate by 66 points in the standings where he is down in seventh place.

Piastri admits he’s not enjoying the new generation of cars with their near 50/50 split between electrical and combustion power.

Asked if he felt “like a passenger of the AI systems”, he told PlanetF1.com and other media in Madrid: “Sometimes, yes

“At a track like Spa or a track like Silverstone, it’s going to be worse. At the Hungaroring or Zandvoort, I really don’t expect there to be many problems at all with that kind of thing, because the straights are so much shorter, so even if there are differences, they should be a lot less.

“But the principle of driving a race car that loses effectively half of its power before the end of the straight is hard to get your head around sometimes.

“Even in Spa, a lot of the middle sector we were doing it just on the combustion engine, with no battery assistance at all, which is a weird feeling in itself, having some corners with a certain amount of power and others with full power.

“I think Spa was particularly frustrating, not just for me but for quite a lot of others, because those small differences in the code and what the engines did made quite a big difference in lap time.

“Especially at the front of the field, I think there were still only nine hundredths or something separating four positions, and there were definitely more than nin””

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