Oscar Piastri’s season-long deficit to Lando Norris has McLaren on the brink of prioritising the reigning world champion in the second half of the season, according to Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft.
Croft said Piastri had “consistently” lagged his teammate throughout 2026. Norris sits fifth in the standings, 91 points behind championship leading Mercedes gun Kimi Antonelli. Piastri is seventh, 127 points behind.
Oscar Piastri has been ‘consistently’ lagging teammate Lando Norris in 2026. Clive Rose
In F1’s most recent outing in Hungary, Piastri pounced on a small Norris error on the opening lap and led much of the first half of the race.
Norris maintained throughout much of the opening stanza he was quicker than Piastri, and when he leapfrogged his Aussie teammate in the pitstop cycle – after Piastri was nearly taken out of the race by contact with Carlos Sainz – he duly proved it by disappearing into the distance.
Piastri would later retire from the race anyway with a gearbox failure.
“I thought his move at turn 2 (in Hungary) was exactly the sort of move we expect from Oscar Piastri,” Croft said on Sky Sports’ The F1 Show.
“He is a fine, fine driver. But in 2026, he finds himself not having the pace of his teammate, and not just in Budapest, but I think consistently, over race weekends, he hasn’t had as much pace as Lando.
“McLaren have got to give both drivers as big a chance as they can to do as well as they can, but they can’t ignore the fact that one driver is going to go on and win the race, and the other is going to come under pressure if they keep him out in front.”
At the midway point of the season, Piastri trails Norris by every measure. In head-to-heads, Norris leads qualifying 11-4 and races 8-3. Norris is on average nearly a tenth faster in qualifying, and has a better average qualifying position (4.3-5.4). He also has a significantly better average finishing position in races (3.7-5.4).
McLaren sits 159 points behind Mercedes in the constructors’ standings, and 87 points behind Ferrari. Croft said the team will need to start prioritising Norris if it wants to win a third-straight constructors’ title.
“Oscar’s got to find a way to match Lando’s pace,” he said.
“And if he can’t, then I think McLaren, with Mercedes as fragile as they are, and Ferrari’s strategy as fragile as it is, McLaren have got to find every way to maximise every advantage.
Piastri led Norris for much of the first half of the Hungarian Grand Prix. Getty Images
“And for me, one of the big things coming out of the summer break, can McLaren carry this on? Are they going to put their eggs in Lando Norris’ basket, and is it going to come up trumps once again?”
F1 is in the middle of the mid-season break. The series resumes with the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort – a sprint meeting – on the weekend of August 21-23.