No podium since Miami, eight races ago. Seventh in the standings on 92 points. A Hungarian Grand Prix that ended with a gearbox failure after contact with Carlos Sainz. Oscar Piastri's 2026 is not in dispute. The reason for it is.
Piastri's own account is understated. He told RacingNews365 the first half had been "highs and lows, no doubt. Probably more lows than highs, unfortunately. For us as a team, it obviously wasn't the first half of the season we would have liked to have had, especially compared to last year."
For him the target is repeatability rather than raw pace. "For me, there were also good moments, some not so good moments, and pretty much everything in between. I want to be able to step up and be a bit more consistent at my highest level, and hopefully we can do that in the second half of the year."
Juan Pablo Montoya locates the problem in Piastri's head. The former McLaren driver, quoted by GPblog, believes the 2025 championship is still being carried around.
"Losing the championship last year really hurt him mentally. It's a process of getting over it, figuring it out and getting the focus and the energy back on getting the job done. He is bloody good, so I think he will," Montoya said, adding: "It's such a big thing on the head, the psychology part of it. [...] When you're in that position where you look unbeatable and you lose the championship, it's a hard pill to swallow."
RacingNews365's Jake Nichol explicitly rejects that as the main cause. In his 15 August analysis he accepts the title loss "will certainly be hanging over Piastri, but it is far from the main reason why he is struggling." His argument is technical: the 2026 regulations stripped downforce and pushed the cars back to a wing-led, raked philosophy, producing a nervous rear end. Piastri's smooth, Prost-style precision was tailored to the heavy-floor 2025 cars. Nichol adds a second point — Piastri has only ever raced ground-effect McLarens, while Lando Norris has the 2019-to-2021 generation in his muscle memory.
Andrea Stella has said something similar in gentler terms, calling his driver "too clean" for these cars and citing the reduced downforce of 2026.
PlanetF1 offers the harshest reading. Its Hungary feature argues that admitting to low-grip struggles is itself an admission of being "a limited and less versatile driver than his peers", and puts the Norris deficit down to Piastri putting more energy through the rear tyres. It also raises the Mark Webber parallel — Piastri's own manager, eventually cast as the nearly man alongside Sebastian Vettel — and notes both the clipped "don't talk to me now" radio message to engineer Tom Stallard in Budapest and Webber's decision to step back from trackside duties this year.
Each diagnosis implies a different timeline. Montoya's version resolves itself with time. Nichol's and Stella's require Piastri to rebuild his technique mid-season. PlanetF1's does not resolve at all.
What all four accept is that the MCL40 is a winning car again after Hungary. The machinery excuse has gone.