Piastri reveals ‘clear sign of progress’ after ‘challenging’ year for McLaren

Oscar Piastri has opened up on his “challenging” campaign with McLaren, admitting that after months of “hard work”, he now feels that he’s made tangible progress in “getting to grips” with the car.

Following his loss of the 2025 Drivers’ Championship by 13 points to team mate Lando Norris, Piastri started this season on the back foot with a DNS in both his home event in Australia and Round 2 in China.

While a return to the podium followed in Japan and Miami, he has failed to make the rostrum since due to struggles with the new car, which Norris drove to back-to-back victories in Hungary and the Netherlands.

However, McLaren CEO Zak Brown recently commented that Piastri’s increased confidence behind the wheel has seen him go “back to the driver I know”, and the Australian was asked whether he agreed ahead of the United States Grand Prix.

“[That driver was] certainly was hard to find for a while, but I feel like the last triple header was definitely more back to where I wanted to be,” he said. “Definitely not still at the level I want or aspire to be at, but back in the ballpark that I should be in.

“I mean, it's been no secret this year's been challenging in terms of getting a grip on this year’s car, but I feel like over the last few weeks it's started to click a little bit more. It's still very challenging, but we're finding a way.

“I feel I'm slowly getting there – both improving this year and also identifying what I need more or less of to go quicker from the car. So yeah, we're getting there, but this is not the level I want to be trying to get to. I want to be getting to a much higher level than where I'm at but it's a clear sign of progress which is what I'm after.”

Recovering from an error that dropped him from the top three to P13 in Baku, Piastri went on to finish P6 and P5 in Malaysia and Singapore respectively as he continued to work with the team to learn the intricacies of his car.

He explained: “We've tried various things. I think what we're dealing with, what's been challenging this year, you can't quickly fix. I think even trying to fix it overall is not an easy thing at all, but we've been trying some things.

“There's been a lot of hard work in terms of how I adapt myself to the car, because the things that were often working so well for me at points last year are kind of the things that are my downfall in a lot of weekends this year.

“When you can't rely on the things that you normally want to rely on, it is always challenging – both in terms of actually adapting but also when you've been used to something working for you for a long time, trying to go away from that there’s almost a mental challenge to that as well.

“I feel like we're making progress and things are starting to feel a little bit more comfortable but there's still room to go.”

This weekend represents another opportunity for Piastri to deliver a positive result for McLaren, but he was cautious to manage expectations amid the tight battle between the top four teams.

Asked whether the Circuit of The Americas will suit the MCL40, he replied: “Difficult to say. I think in general the high speed corners are where we've been stronger this year and the low speeds are where we've struggled.

“I think here you've got a combination of both – you've got very high speed and pretty low speed as well, and very long low speed in a lot of ways, so it'll challenge everything. We've got a few new bits on the car which will hopefully help us a little bit.

“We know that we're lacking a bit of performance compared to the teams around us in general, regardless of our strengths and weaknesses, but hopefully at least we can exploit some strengths this weekend.”