{"id":406365,"date":"2026-01-11T14:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T14:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/406365\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T14:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T14:20:09","slug":"oscar-piastri-urged-to-adopt-selfish-mclaren-stance-in-f1-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/406365\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri urged to adopt selfish McLaren stance in F1 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar Piastri<\/a> has been advised to adopt a selfish kickback towards McLaren\u2019s \u2018team first\u2019 principles this year by a former Formula 1<\/a> World Champion.<\/p>\n

The Australian squandered a 34-point lead \u2013 earned by August \u2013 and eventually finished third in the standings to eventual champion and team-mate Lando Norris, and Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n

Piastri was also caught up in the team\u2019s strong leaning towards equal treatment of both drivers, which, in some instances, went against him.<\/p>\n

At Monza, Piastri was asked to give up second place to Norris by the Woking-based squad<\/a>\u2018s pit wall, who had lost the position due to a botched pit stop.<\/p>\n

There were also other moments of human error which also contributed to his eventual failure to capture the title, namely at the penultimate round in Qatar.<\/p>\n

With a Safety Car deployed early on, both he and Norris were kept out, with Verstappen pitting, amid the mandatory 25-lap maximum on one set of tyres.<\/p>\n

It cost Piastri victory, with Verstappen claiming the win, and with it, the chance to win the championship at the final round in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the Drive to Wynn podcast, 1996 World Champion Damon Hill conveyed sympathy with Piastri for both those incidents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he probably felt the worst he was going to feel after Qatar, I think he could not believe what had happened there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had some misfortune, you have to say, and he\u2019s lost out because of some decisions with McLaren, trying to be fair. For example, Lando had a bad pit stop at Monza, and he was asked to give the place back.<\/p>\n

\u201cWow, that\u2019s quite a big thing to do, isn\u2019t it, to give points away to a guy you could be fighting for the World Championship for?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe will probably look at that and go, \u2018Well, maybe I won\u2019t do that again\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"McLarenIncidents, such as McLaren\u2019s failure to act on a Safety Car in Qatar, contributed to Oscar Piastri losing the title<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri has to \u2018think of himself\u2019 to stand best chance of F1 title success<\/p>\n

Hill won the Drivers\u2019 title with his Williams team adopting an approach of equality between himself and team-mate Jacques Villeneuve, having previously been deployed as a \u2018number two\u2019 to Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna.<\/p>\n

The 65-year-old offered Piastri the advice of doing it utmost to sideswipe the \u2018papaya rules\u2019 attitude at McLaren and focus on himself amid Norris\u2019 defence of his title in 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cNext year, if I were him, I\u2019d be coming back saying, \u2018Listen, I love the team, and it\u2019s been great, but I have to think of myself\u2019,\u201d Hill continued.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018It\u2019s my career. If the situation arises and you ask me to return points to my team-mate, you have to ask yourself, why would I do that?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I can\u2019t afford to do that. I did it last year. That could have cost me the World Championship\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE \u2013 Ex-F1 star offers \u2018no sympathy\u2019 to Oscar Piastri for 2025 title defeat<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri has been advised to adopt a selfish kickback towards McLaren\u2019s \u2018team first\u2019 principles this year by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,913,2333,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-406365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-mclaren","14":"tag-oscar-piastri","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}