Oscar Piastri believes McLaren’s MCL40 does not suffer from a particular flaw, but rather needs a lift across the board if the team are to fight consistently at the sharp end of the grid.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The Australian finished fourth at the Austrian Grand Prix, climbing from seventh on the grid to beat both Ferraris at the Red Bull Ring, a result he described as better than the team had anticipated.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Piastri finished just under 22 seconds behind race winner George Russell but comfortably ahead of Lewis Hamilton in fifth and Charles Leclerc in eighth, a noteworthy scalp given Ferrari sit 45 points clear of McLaren in the constructors’ standings.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“It felt like a good race, and we were able to execute well and apply some things I’ve learned over the last few weeks,” Piastri said after the grand prix in Spielberg\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“The pace was stronger than we expected, and to be able to successfully challenge and beat Ferrari was a definite positive for the team.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“I feel like we got the absolute most out of the car and that’s a good feeling.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tDefending champions stuck in third<\/p>\n
Yet the 25-year-old was quick to temper any excitement, acknowledging that McLaren remains some way off the pace required to trouble Mercedes and Ferrari regularly.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It has been a chastening title defence for McLaren, who swept to both the constructors’ and drivers’ championships in 2025.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Eight rounds into the new campaign, the team sits third on 159 points, already 143 behind Mercedes at the top and 45 adrift of Ferrari.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The team are yet to win a grand prix in 2026, with their four podium finishes, two apiece for Piastri and Lando Norris, underlining a car that can occasionally punch above its weight but lacks the raw pace to do so week in, week out.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Piastri and Norris remain locked in a tight internal battle, separated by a single point in fourth and fifth in the drivers’ championship on 80 and 79 points respectively.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Austria provided a boost for Piastri, who scored 12 points to Norris’s six after his team-mate could manage only seventh, but with no single area to target and no silver bullet to find, the MCL40 simply needs to be faster everywhere, according to the Australian.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“However, we still need to find more pace if we want to be up there challenging the top three consistently,” the nine-time grand prix winner added.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“We don’t have a specific area of weakness; we just need more overall performance and grip to take that next step.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“We’ll keep chipping away at it, and we’ll focus on carrying this momentum into the next few races…”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri believes McLaren’s MCL40 does not suffer from a particular flaw, but rather needs a lift across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-771063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771063","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=771063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}