‘I’ve got nothing to prove’ – Piastri vows not to have a ‘rebellious streak’ in 2026 after missing out on title

Oscar Piastri has stated that he will not possess a “rebellious streak” despite losing out to his team mate Lando Norris in last season’s Drivers' Championship fight, adding that McLaren’s interests will still be his priority.

The Woking outfit built up an unassailable lead to win the 2025 Teams’ Championship thanks to the consistently strong drives from Piastri and Norris, but having the pair both performing at a high level led to difficulties when it came to team orders.

Coining the term ‘papaya rules’, McLaren allowed their drivers to race each other as long as they kept it incident-free, which helped them dominate as a team but caused debate over the fairness of when the rules were implemented.

After commanding the standings for the majority of the season, a drop in form following the European rounds saw Norris overtake the Australian, who ended the year in third place behind his team mate and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

Ahead of his home race, Piastri was asked about his working relationship with team CEO Zak Brown, who was a proponent of papaya rules, with the 24-year-old responding: “My relationship with Zak is very good, and I think it’s gotten stronger the longer we’ve known each other. He’s certainly good fun and he’s just good to have around.

“He and Andrea [Stella, McLaren Team Principal] are two people with very different styles that work well together. Obviously as a team, not just Zak and I, we had some tough moments through last year, as any team has, but I think our relationship has only gotten stronger from that.”

Piastri will be targeting a better result at this year’s Australian Grand Prix after he tumbled down the order after veering off the track in 2025, while Norris went on to take his first victory of the year.

Despite his close competition with the Briton, he insisted that there is no bad blood and explained that the main objective for them both is to “race for the best interests of the team” and aim for a third consecutive Teams’ Championship.

“We’ve always had freedom to race for our own individual results as well,” he said. “Maybe on some occasions we’ve not always made the perfect decision, but I think for me the important part of that is there’s never been any bad intention with that.

“We’ve had a lot of learning about things we can do differently, things we can do better. I’ve got nothing to prove. I’m certainly not going to have a rebellious streak or anything like that.

“A pretty quickfire way to make sure you’re not going to win a championship is go against your own team, so I don’t think that’s a very wise move. We’ve had discussions and worked on things we can do better this year.”