{"id":851816,"date":"2026-08-09T13:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/851816\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T13:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T13:00:11","slug":"oscar-piastri-admits-2026-f1-season-has-come-with-difficulties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/851816\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri admits 2026 F1 season has come with ‘difficulties’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar Piastri has opened up about how the 2026 Formula 1<\/a> season has pushed him out of his comfort zone and forced him to change his driving style. <\/p>\n

After a championship fight that raged throughout 2025, Piastri looked like a prime contender to come into the new regulations as a title rival.<\/p>\n

However, 2026 dealt the Australian a very different hand. At his home grand prix in the season opener, Piastri crashed on the reconnaissance lap. He suffered reliability issues at the Chinese Grand Prix<\/a> that saw him unable to start the race. <\/p>\n

A notch down from expectations<\/p>\n

In Suzuka, he finally broke through the bad luck and managed to take a podium finish. Although a better result could have been on the table if it weren\u2019t for a poorly timed Safety Car. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a difficult season since Japan for the Australian. The podium in Suzuka was one of just two times he\u2019s made it into the top three. The other came in Miami. <\/p>\n

Piastri admitted that the team performance hasn\u2019t been where they expected or wanted it to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think our kind of general level of performance has not been quite where we want it to be, obviously,\u201d Piastri said in an interview with McLaren\u2019s official website.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve come close to some victories and had a few podiums, which has been good, but we obviously set the bar pretty high last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve also had a fair share of issues, whether it be difficult races or reliability issues. So definitely up and down.\u201d<\/p>\n

2026 brings a massive overhaul of regulations, with a switch from the previous downforce-defined era to a 50\/50 split between the electric and combustion engines. It has brought with it a different way of approaching each corner, with drivers focused on saving up their energy deployment. <\/p>\n

\"OscarOscar Piastri has admitted the 2026 season has been challenging <\/p>\n

New regulations<\/p>\n

The Australian spoke about how these changes have affected his approach to the season, with Barcelona representing the first time that Piastri was really hit with how different he\u2019d have to approach the year. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re having to find so many new things and new ways of extracting performance out of the car and ourselves,\u201d Piastri explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite easy to just settle into your normal rhythm and do the things you\u2019ve always done, but that doesn\u2019t always work in these cars \u2013 I think Barcelona was definitely an example of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Austria I felt like I really had to stretch myself a bit more and try some new things, and just go about driving in a slightly different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Barcelona, Piastri finished fifth, which on paper isn\u2019t the worst result. Although the results left him a minute off the race lead, and significantly 35 seconds off the pace of his teammate.<\/p>\n

Things change quickly from track to track under new regulations. In Austria, Piastri took the chequered flag ahead of Norris, despite Austria traditionally being one of his better circuits. <\/p>\n

\u201cAustria was a good one,\u201d Piastri reflected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result was reasonable, with the P4, but also in terms of the turnaround from Barcelona and just how I felt the weekend went.<\/p>\n

\u201cBarcelona was definitely one of the more difficult weekends of the year, and I had to learn a lot from that one and improve quite a lot, and I feel like Austria was really good: to bounce back and put some of that learning into place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the good results have been one thing, but I feel like I\u2019ve also learned a lot about how I can improve myself as a driver, even if the results don\u2019t always show it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The importance of upgrades<\/p>\n

One of the key aspects of the 2026 season has been the introduction and process of bringing upgrades. The quick turnaround for teams has been closing the performance gap to Mercedes out front, with Ferrari leading the charge of upgrades and taking two victories in Barcelona and Silverstone. <\/p>\n

McLaren have also taken that step with bringing upgrades, and Piastri believed that the team are taking the right steps to fight at the front heading into the summer break.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery car is going to need slightly different things on how to go fast, and I feel like in the last few races before the break, I\u2019ve definitely discovered more and more about how the car needs to be driven, how it works, how to go quickly in it, which is not always the most obvious or natural thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether that be us as drivers getting used to them, or through the work that has been done across drivers, teams, the FIA and F1 to tweak and improve them as we\u2019ve gone through the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, looking back at the halfway point, we still have work to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we can\u2019t just make the regulations and the racing exactly how we want it as drivers \u2013 as that may make it quite boring for everyone else \u2013 there are still tweaks we can make to improve from where we are now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am looking forward to seeing what we can do with the second part of the season and into next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

No doubt the order will continue to shift as the season progresses and the next season begins, with every race offering drivers and teams a chance to learn from their mistakes and their upgrades. <\/p>\n

READ MORE: Ex-FIA steward warns Lewis Hamilton after targeting officials over penalty streak<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri has opened up about how the 2026 Formula 1 season has pushed him out of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,590,592,82],"class_list":["post-851816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}