Oscar Piastri’s start to the 2026 season might have damaged a driver less confident in their abilities.

Piastri’s opening two rounds were ones for the record books: no grand prix starts after crashing out of the formation lap in Melbourne and then being wheeled off the grid with an engine problem in Shanghai.

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It was the first time in world championship history a driver had qualified but failed to start for the first two grands prix of a season.

Unable to even attempt to hit back after losing the championship by just 13 points to teammate Lando Norris only three months earlier was a bitter way to start his follow-up campaign as a bona fide title contender.

But if the burden of that start was weighing on him by the time Formula 1 arrived in Japan for the last race in five weeks, Piastri certainly wasn’t showing it.

In fact it was quite the opposite.

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“I think this weekend was probably one of my best weekends in F1,” he said after qualifying third and finishing second, having come within a safety car of claiming what would have been an extraordinary win over the dominant Mercedes drivers.

It was notable that the laid-back breeziness that has defined Piastri’s entire career never appeared to leave him during his challenging first two races.

Though he was clearly distraught after binning his car at his home race, equilibrium was restored in short order, and by the time he stepped out of the car in Shanghai without having turned a lap, bemusement was the overriding emotion.

“It’s been a while since I’ve watched two grands prix on TV,” he quipped afterwards.

But it’s notable too that the Piastri of 2026 feels different to the previous models.

Oscar Piastri’s start to the 2026 season might have damaged a driver less confident in their abilities.Source: AFP

Though Formula 1 moves too quickly for a driver to ever rest on their laurels, after last year’s breakout season, Piastri carries himself as someone with little left to prove. Of course the championship stands remains on the to-do list, but with three campaigns under his belt, he’s proved he warrants a place at the very front of the Formula 1 field.

“I certainly feel more comfortable now than I did in my first year of F1,” he says, speaking with Fox Sports.

“I think it’s always been something that’s pretty important to me, being just who I am off the track as well and not trying to force something that isn’t me.”

The gradual opening up of Piastri hasn’t been a matter of time, though. It’s been a matter of progress.

“It’s always attached to performances on the track,” he says. “I think often I find it very hard anyway to be kind of jokey or making shots at people and stuff if you can’t back it up on track, and for me just being relaxed and being myself has always been how I am.

“I think as you become more comfortable, you kind of make jokes about not doing the first two races of the year or stuff like that.

“That’s just always how I’ve been in some ways, but once you’ve got some results and let’s say some street cred to back it up, then you naturally feel a bit more comfortable, showing yourself more and not being maybe the super professional F1 driver all the time and letting your personality show.

“That’s just how I am as a person, and I think everyone’s unique in their own way.”

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‘CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP’

It’s part of Piastri’s career trajectory. Now in his fourth season, he’s no longer the underdog battling an experience deficit. Especially with this year’s all-new regulations, everyone’s on effectively the same level playing field.

It’s too early to be able to draw conclusions about whether his development trajectory has taken him past his teammate, the reigning world champion, given they’ve finished only one grand prix together, but from what little we’ve seen so far, Piastri looks as assured on track as he does off it.

“Despite Oscar not having started the two main races at the start of the 2026 season, based on what we have seen in testing, in practice, in qualifying, based on his overall attitude and mental strength, I think we are seeing the best version of Oscar, the strongest Oscar since he’s been in Formula 1,” McLaren principal Andrea Stella said after the Japanese Grand Prix.

“If we think of the home race, where you are not in a condition to start for a situation that was completely avoidable, it can really bog you down, but if anything, I think we’ve seen his steadiness, his strength — and a strength that has been able to be passed on to the team.

“The team gets a lot of inspiration from the charismatic leadership that the drivers can offer. That’s been definitely a boost for the entire team to go through the adversity.

“Really well done to Oscar for the way he’s been facing this start of the season.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Piastri the leader is finding different ways to operate at the elite level.

The Australian has been guided by manager Mark Webber since 2019, when the nine-time grand prix winner took him under his wing.

The Webber connection was about more than just securing a path from Formula Renault Eurocup, where he was competing at the time, to Formula 1; it was a mentor relationship that proved increasingly valuable the further up the ladder Piastri progressed.

Webber has been there and done that. He understands the pressure of being a Formula 1 driver at a top team and has toiled in the heat of a championship battle.

The Australian has been guided by manager Mark Webber since 2019, when the nine-time grand prix winner took him under his wing.Source: Getty Images

But as Piastri has accrued his own experiences, he’s had less of a need to lean on those of his mentor.

Webber remains intensely involved as his manager but is no longer a race-by-race fixture; Pedro Matos, his race engineer during his title-winning Formula 2 season with Prema, is now his eyes and ears on the ground.

“[Webber] is still very much involved, and I’ve still spoken to him a lot through the start of the year,” Piastri explains.

“I’m getting more experience in my own career, and there’s also an element of I’ve just got more experience, so I can make some of these decisions, ask some of these questions myself.

“Especially the first couple of years or especially year one of F1, there were a lot of questions that hadn’t even crossed my mind that Mark was asking as if they were obvious to me and the team.

“I think now some of those questions come a lot more naturally for me.

“It’s just a natural evolution, really.”

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A CRUCIAL MONTH

There’s bad news and good news for Piastri after Japan.

The bad news is that he has to wait five long weeks to back up his first start and finish of the season. If he’s seeking momentum, he won’t find it here.

But the good news is that the month off will give McLaren a chance to develop its car for the Miami Grand Prix, which is already being billed as a mini form reset thanks to the masses of upgrades expected for all teams.

McLaren has been open about its intention to start the season relatively underdeveloped before heavily upgrading its car. It’s a strategy that paid significant dividends in the last two seasons and it could yet work again, particularly given it’s equipped with the class-leading Mercedes power unit.

Bahrain and Saudia Arabia, then, are two fewer races in which McLaren will lose points to Mercedes before its first major upgrade of the year.

Piastri will be working on his own upgrades too.

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“I think everyone will probably take the opportunity as well to have a proper block of training,” he says.

“This off-season was a difficult one to navigate because of how short it was. Trying to fit in processing last year, spending time with my family, spending time with my friends, spending time in the sun, spending time physically training and then coming back to work — that was a lot of things to do in about two weeks.

“We’ve also got a bit of an understanding about these cars now; we can probably relax a little bit more than we could in the pre-season, because there were so many things to understand.”

But he also heads into this long break knowing that his season is back on the rails, and not just because he’s completed his first grand prix of the season.

After what looked like a dire start to the year for McLaren, the Japanese Grand Prix suggested the team isn’t as far behind Mercedes as first thought.

With development expected to be conducted at breakneck speed, the 2026 season — Piastri’s dream of the title this year — isn’t yet over.

Asked whether Mercedes could be beaten this year, Piastri was unequivocal from the second-place finisher position.

“Yes,” he said. “I think the fact that I could keep George behind for so long was really encouraging.

“I’m confident that we can get there, but we’ve still got some work to do.”

That work is already feverishly underway, but you can be sure Piastri will remain characteristically unfussed as his 2026 campaign begins to take shape.