New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nThe Australian\u2019s lead had been delicate. He clearly didn\u2019t have Norris\u2019s pace, but he seized first place on the opening lap. With overtaking extremely difficult at the Hungaroring, he had a shot at grinding out a gritty, defensive victory.<\/p>\n
But the time lost to the Sainz collision cost him that lead and, with it, any shot of victory. That his gearbox failed later in the race only added insult to injury.<\/p>\n
Another low to outweigh those highs, then \u2014 and with Norris romping to an unopposed victory, more questions about the balance of power inside McLaren just half a season on from the narrow title decider in Abu Dhabi that could have seen either driver crowned world champion.<\/p>\n
Piastri has been outqualified for five grands prix in a row and seven times from the last eight rounds, and he trails Norris by two places and 36 points in the title standings, the largest margin between them since the end of 2024.<\/p>\n
This is not where many, Piastri included, expected the Australian\u2019s first half of the season to end.<\/p>\n
Piastri rages at race-ruining incident | 03:07<\/p>\n
HOW BAD IS IT REALLY?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no doubt defending champion Norris has the ascendancy at McLaren right now.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s also certainly a lot of hyperventilating about Piastri\u2019s form, with claims that he\u2019s being obliterated by his teammate or that he\u2019s completely lost his way.<\/p>\n
The data tells a slightly different story.<\/p>\n
2026: Piastri vs. Norris in qualifying<\/p>\n
Qualifying head to head: Piastri trails 4-7<\/p>\n
Qualifying differential: Piastri behind 1.2 places<\/p>\n
Time differential: Piastri slower by 0.052 seconds<\/p>\n
Only grand prix qualifying sessions are being analysed here, with sprint qualifying excluded.<\/p>\n
How does it compare to last year\u2019s numbers?<\/p>\n
2025: Piastri vs. Norris in qualifying<\/p>\n
Qualifying head to head: Piastri trailed 11-13<\/p>\n
Qualifying differential: Piastri behind 0.1 places<\/p>\n
Time differential: Piastri slower by 0.067 seconds<\/p>\n
We can see that Piastri, lap for lap, is slightly closer to Norris this season, but in 2026 it\u2019s translating into a bigger qualifying position gap because McLaren is in a closer battle with more teams, shrinking the margin for error.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a similar story when we compare the race results. Only grands prix in which both are classified finishers are counted in these statistics, with sprints excluded.<\/p>\n
2026: Piastri vs. Norris in races<\/p>\n
Race head to head: tied 3-3<\/p>\n
Race differential: Piastri behind 0.3 places<\/p>\n
Finishing differential: Piastri slower by 6.193 seconds<\/p>\n
Points: Piastri adrift 92-128 points (42-58 per cent)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s perhaps closer than you\u2019d think, particularly if you were looking only at the points table.<\/p>\n
These numbers are also not far removed from last year\u2019s results.<\/p>\n
2025: Piastri vs. Norris in races<\/p>\n
Race head to head: Piastri trailed 9-12<\/p>\n
Race differential: Piastri behind 0.1 places<\/p>\n
Finishing differential: Piastri slower by 3.030 seconds<\/p>\n
Points: Piastri adrift 410-432 points (49-51 per cent)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s useful to consider the above data as our baseline in thinking back over Piastri\u2019s half-season.<\/p>\n
The baseline tells us that there is no disaster unfolding for Piastri at McLaren. The blowout isn\u2019t borne out by the results.<\/p>\n
It also tells us, though, that Piastri hasn\u2019t kicked on from last year\u2019s big leap forward \u2014 or, if he has, Norris has matched the gains.<\/p>\n
Norris is surely bringing to bear the confidence of winning his first championship.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s more to it than that.<\/p>\n
‘Get out of the F***ing way you Idiot!’ | 00:46<\/p>\n
TOO CLEAN, TOO SMOOTH<\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult to separate the change in form from the change in regulations.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d developed an understanding of the differences between Piastri and Norris in the ground-effect era, but that car no longer exists, and the 2026 beat that\u2019s replaced it is dramatically different.<\/p>\n
The peculiar hybrid engine aside, this car needs to be driven differently to get the best out of it.<\/p>\n
Lower in downforce, shorter in every dimension, lighter and with smaller tyres, the change is greater than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a change that, on paper, would appear to play to Piastri\u2019s weaknesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the drivers are talking about this generation of cars requiring a certain driving style,\u201d McLaren boss Andrea Stella hypothesised to Germany\u2019s Sky Sport earlier this month.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, if you just try to drive too clean, the lap time doesn\u2019t come. You have to attack the car, you have to accept that the car slides, you have to be extremely active.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a driving style that comes more normal to Lando than Oscar.\u201d<\/p>\n
It sounds exactly like the conditions that undid Piastri\u2019s championship campaign late last year.<\/p>\n
The Australian has tended to excel when grip is high, braving the upper limit of the car\u2019s potential. When the grip is low, however, it disrupts his rhythm.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s because Piastri\u2019s driving style has long been characterised by a smooth, high-minimum-speed approach. He wants to roll the car through a wide arc over the apex, keeping it under control through the entire corner so that it\u2019s ready to launch from the exit.<\/p>\n
Norris, as just one example, drives differently. He prefers to hustle the car into rotating more sharply so that he can shorten the length of the corner. It\u2019s a more active approach, requiring more input, but it also means he\u2019s more comfortable in slippery conditions, when the car needs corralling because of the lack of grip.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a factor of confidence at play. To throw a car into the corner at high speed, a driver needs to be sure of how it\u2019s going to react.<\/p>\n
Both McLaren drivers have reported that this year\u2019s McLaren is extremely susceptible to condition changes, like unpredictable winds or extreme temperatures. The sweet spot is harder to find.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also clearly lacked competitiveness for most of the season, with the team eschewing major upgrades until the Budapest weekend as it sought to change design direction.<\/p>\n
Drivers have also reported this year\u2019s smaller Pirelli tyres are operating like a switch when it comes to grip \u2014 they either have grip or they don\u2019t \u2014 narrowing the car\u2019s operating window further.<\/p>\n
These are not disastrous circumstances \u2014 again, see the data above \u2014 but they do appear to have played to some of Piastri\u2019s weaknesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are working with Oscar to make sure that his natural application in terms of driving input takes these characteristics into account,\u201d Stella continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we will figure this out and Oscar will be able to express the full extent of his talent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen spins out in Q3 | 00:20<\/p>\n
NO MORE HIGH-SPEED CORNERS<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a second element at play linked directly to the controversial 2026 hybrid engine.<\/p>\n
The power unit has killed many of the sport\u2019s most fearsome corners \u2014 and they\u2019re all the sort of corner in which Piastri was at his most fearsome.<\/p>\n
A fully charged battery in a Formula 1 car runs flat after around 11 seconds of deployment and therefore needs to be topped up around the lap.<\/p>\n
Big braking zones do much of the work, but at tracks where there are few big stops, the charging focus shifts to high-speed corners, which become \u2018super clipping\u2019 zones to charge the power pack.<\/p>\n
This has the double effect of greatly reducing speed through these bends. An F1 car running only on its combustion engine produces around 400 kilowatts, which is less than a Formula 2 car but with the same level of downforce.<\/p>\n
As a result, speed through these high-speed corners is no longer limited by grip and daring, as it traditionally has been. Many of them are now easily flat because cars don\u2019t have the power to make them challenging for the drivers anymore.<\/p>\n
Consider Pouhon at Spa-Francorchamps, the fast downhill double-left. Last year Piastri was quicker through here with a subtle smaller lift of the throttle on entry.<\/p>\n
This year both drivers were easily flat because they were travelling around 40 kilometres per hour slower, both cars out of battery. It was neutralised as a performance differentiator.<\/p>\n
In the words of Sky Sports pundit Martin Brundle: \u201cI\u2019ve got a bit of a tear in my eye because we\u2019ve lost all the great corners at Silverstone, and here we are at Spa with the same situation. These new regulations hurt us on the high-speed circuits.\u201d<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t Piastri\u2019s only strength \u2014 and, as above, it\u2019s not disastrous \u2014 but it was one of his key weapons.<\/p>\n
Between the engine formula and the more skittish, cars, that particular strength has been neutralised.<\/p>\n
Hamilton receives 3 spot grid penalty | 00:33<\/p>\n
RECENT FORM HASN\u2019T MATCHED THE RESULTS<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an interesting parallel here with George Russell, who also employs a similarly smooth driving style and has also struggled for consistency \u2014 and against a teammate with a more active approach behind the wheel.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s interesting too that both Russell and Piastri appear to have been more regularly dealt some of the 2026 engine\u2019s bizarre behavioural defects.<\/p>\n
Both drivers, for example, found themselves inexplicably down on straight-line speed at the final sector in Belgium, which Mercedes later discovered was the result of a glitch in the engine software that governs the hybrid components.<\/p>\n
This glitch was in all Mercedes engines, but Russell and Piastri appear to have been the worst affected among the frontrunners \u2014 noting too that Mercedes believes driving style accounts for some of the power deficit given battery charge and cornering approach are connected.<\/p>\n
Like Russell, however, that can\u2019t account for everything and hasn\u2019t played a major role as slower circuits. It was also patched in time for the weekend\u2019s Hungarian Grand Prix, where both drivers were handily outqualified.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re only as good as your last race, Budapest will be the hook on which Piastri\u2019s season will be looked back upon until racing resumes later this month.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s important to put that race in some context before it\u2019s written off as just the extension of Norris\u2019s ascendancy.<\/p>\n
It was only four rounds ago that Piastri outclassed Norris in Austria.<\/p>\n
One round later, in Silverstone, Piastri was punted out of the race in a first-lap incident with Liam Lawson, the damage of which was compounded by his team delaying bringing him in by a lap because it didn\u2019t realise he needed a new front wing.<\/p>\n
In Belgium he was racing for a podium with Charles Leclerc when the Monegasque crashed into him, causing him up to 0.3 seconds per lap of damage. Leclerc finished second.<\/p>\n
Then, in Hungary, an against-the-odds win was lost in contact with Sainz \u2014 after missing FP1, not getting the car\u2019s upgrades until FP3 and then being blocked on his final Q3 lap in qualifying.<\/p>\n
How different might we consider the form book had just had Piastri had a cleaner run?<\/p>\n
Piastri responds to rumours | 01:14<\/p>\n
NORRIS IS SHOWING THE WAY. CAN PIASTRI FOLLOW?<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s an undeniable final part of the story.<\/p>\n
Norris is clearly operating on a very high level.<\/p>\n
Some of that is surely the confidence of fulfilling his championship potential last year.<\/p>\n
But another part is the effort required to win it \u2014 the effort required to overcome Piastri and, later, do just enough to fend off Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would probably say [Hungary] was up there with one of my best performances in terms of extracting performance out of the car and being so close to the limit every single lap,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019m doing a better job this year than I was last year, and I have done for a little while.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday proved exactly that \u2014 that I could go out and win very convincingly and be on pole in a good car.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m doing a better job, and that\u2019s because of working in many different areas, some away from the track with my team and some here at the track as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve worked on many areas from last year. I feel much more confident lately with how to extract performance, and I\u2019ve worked a lot with my engineers to understand this car because it\u2019s certainly not an easy car to understand and figure out how to drive on the limit consistently.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust hard work \u2014 hard work from my engineers and from myself to improve me as a driver and improve my driving. That is the answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of small differences add up, and you see the result today.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was around this time last year that momentum began to swing from Piastri to Norris.<\/p>\n
He was slightly quicker than Piastri in qualifying and was competitive enough in the race to claim an unforeseen victory with an obscure strategy play.<\/p>\n
Piastri was faster than Norris over a single lap just three more times for the rest of the season and finished ahead of him only twice.<\/p>\n
Some might argue that was the beginning of a negative trend, but the early phase of this season disproved that, with Piastri getting the better start in the opening rounds, and even now the gap between them is slender.<\/p>\n
Instead what it proves is that it\u2019s definitely not too late for Piastri to find another level and end his season positively.<\/p>\n
This time last year, Norris was written off in his battle for supremacy against Piastri and, by extension, for the championship. He\u2019d had trouble adapting to the car and fitting his driving style to its demands.<\/p>\n
We know how that ended.<\/p>\n
Cerebral Piastri has undoubtedly already formulated how he\u2019ll change his approach in the second half of the season to overcome his own mismatch with the car.<\/p>\n
After 11 rounds, by his own admission, his season has comprised my lows than highs. It would be a surprise if Piastri couldn\u2019t rebalance that ledger by the end of the campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMore lows than highs\u201d is how Oscar Piastri summed up the first half of his season in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-830044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830044","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=830044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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