{"id":846199,"date":"2026-08-07T00:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T00:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/846199\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T00:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T00:56:12","slug":"f1-news-2026-mclaren-prioritising-lando-norris-over-oscar-piastri-david-croft-comments-mid-season-head-to-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/846199\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 news 2026: McLaren prioritising Lando Norris over Oscar Piastri, David Croft comments, mid-season head-to-head"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar Piastri<\/a>\u2019s season-long deficit to Lando Norris<\/a> has McLaren<\/a> on the brink of prioritising the reigning world champion in the second half of the season, according to Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft.<\/p>\n

Croft said Piastri had \u201cconsistently\u201d lagged his teammate throughout 2026. Norris sits fifth in the standings, 91 points behind championship leading Mercedes<\/a> gun Kimi Antonelli<\/a>. Piastri is seventh, 127 points behind.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri has been \u2018consistently\u2019 lagging teammate Lando Norris in 2026.\u00a0Clive Rose<\/p>\n

In F1<\/a>\u2019s most recent outing in Hungary<\/a>, Piastri pounced on a small Norris error on the opening lap and led much of the first half of the race.<\/p>\n

Norris maintained throughout much of the opening stanza he was quicker than Piastri, and when he leapfrogged his Aussie teammate in the pitstop cycle \u2013 after Piastri was nearly taken out of the race by contact with Carlos Sainz<\/a> \u2013 he duly proved it by disappearing into the distance.<\/p>\n

Piastri would later retire from the race anyway with a gearbox failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought his move at turn 2 (in Hungary) was exactly the sort of move we expect from Oscar Piastri,\u201d Croft said on Sky Sports\u2019 The F1 Show.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe 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\u2019t had as much pace as Lando.<\/p>\n

\u201cMcLaren have got to give both drivers as big a chance as they can to do as well as they can, but they can\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

McLaren sits 159 points behind Mercedes in the constructors\u2019 standings, and 87 points behind Ferrari<\/a>. Croft said the team will need to start prioritising Norris if it wants to win a third-straight constructors\u2019 title.<\/p>\n

\u201cOscar\u2019s got to find a way to match Lando\u2019s pace,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if he can\u2019t, then I think McLaren, with Mercedes as fragile as they are, and Ferrari\u2019s strategy as fragile as it is, McLaren have got to find every way to maximise every advantage.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Piastri led Norris for much of the first half of the Hungarian Grand Prix.\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd 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\u2019 basket, and is it going to come up trumps once again?\u201d<\/p>\n

F1 is in the middle of the mid-season break. The series resumes with the Dutch Grand Prix<\/a> at Zandvoort \u2013 a sprint meeting \u2013 on the weekend of August 21-23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri\u2019s season-long deficit to Lando Norris has McLaren on the brink of prioritising the reigning world champion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-846199","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\/846199","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=846199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}