When Formula 1 returns to Zandvoort next month, it will mark a year since Oscar Piastri last stood on the top step of a podium.
On the last occasion he did, he did it in style: pole position, every lap led, fastest lap, the lot – a maiden grand chelem that stretched his championship lead over McLaren team-mate Lando Norris to 34 points with nine rounds still to run.
It was, at the time, the high-water mark of the best season of his career. It has also turned out to be the last time he won a grand prix.
What happened in the 12 months since is not one story but two, and it’s an important distinction; more important than the anniversary itself.
The 2025 version of Piastri’s decline was about being beaten by Max Verstappen in the Red Bull and, more significantly, by Norris in the same car on the other side of the garage.
Miami offered some hope before things went south
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This year has offered no such clean narrative, but it would be too generous to call it pure misfortune, either.
Piastri has certainly had circumstance work against him in ways he didn’t in 2025.
He has also, on the more measurable evidence, simply been slower than his team-mate for most of the season: Norris holds an 11-4 qualifying head-to-head over him including sprints, a scoreline that has swung decisively in the Briton’s favour since a Piastri-led start to the year.
Bad luck explains the DNFs, but it doesn’t fully explain that.
A first half with more downs than ups
The season barely started before it went wrong: Piastri crashed out before the race even began at his home grand prix in Melbourne, then failed to start in China a fortnight later because of an electrical fault with the new Mercedes power unit – the same issue that also sidelined Norris.
Two rounds in, Piastri sat 12th in the championship with three points to his name, all of them from a sprint race.
A recovery of sorts followed at Suzuka, where he finished second to Kimi Antonelli in what amounted to his first full, uninterrupted race weekend of the year.
Miami also offered hope, as McLaren enjoyed its strongest weekend to that point with a double podium, Norris ahead of Piastri.
But even as the results picked up, the qualifying picture did not: since that early run, Norris has outqualified him in five of the next six rounds, taking the head-to-head lead for the first time all season.
A few solid but unspectacular weekends followed before a disastrous British GP. After a distant seventh in the sprint, Piastri was squeezed between the two Racing Bulls on the opening lap of the race itself, picked up front-wing damage, and never recovered from the early stop it forced.
Silverstone was one of Piastri’s low points so far in 2026
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By the midpoint of the year, sitting seventh in the standings on 92 points, Piastri was honest about how it had gone.
“There have been highs and lows, for sure,” he said. “Probably more lows than highs, unfortunately.
“There have been some good moments, some not-so-good moments and pretty much everything in between.
“I want to be able to improve and be a bit more consistently on top of my game, and hopefully we can do that this weekend and in the second half of the year.”