The 2026 F1 British GP has been a challenging weekend for McLaren’s Oscar Piastri thus far, with the Australian driver struggling with a lack of rear grip and balance in his MCL40.
Despite a set-up change ahead of Qualifying, the 25-year-old continued to face similar issues and had to settle for P8. This marked his lowest Saturday placement of the 2026 F1 season.
Piastri on a tough Qualifying at the 2026 F1 British GP
Reflecting on the challenging Qualifying session at the 2026 F1 British GP, Piastri shared that McLaren had been battling persistent balance issues with the MCL40 all weekend, which only intensified as the track conditions changed.
“Yeah, we’ve been struggling the whole weekend with just the balance of the car. And I think in these conditions it’s definitely made things worse. I think it’s certainly not been from a lack of trying. So, yeah, just a very, very tricky weekend so far.”
The Australian also lamented that his McLaren lacked stability and rear grip, especially in the high-speed corners. This prevented Piastri from extracting pace from his MCL40 and pushing it to its limits around the Silverstone circuit.
“Everywhere. Yeah, I mean, the car is just very, very nervous. And, yeah, when you’ve got that in every corner, especially the high-speed corners as well, it’s never particularly comfortable. So yeah, that’s been the biggest struggle the whole course.”
Addressing the team radio quote
Prior to his second run in Q3, the nine-time race winner had an incident in the pits involving a near miss with Racing Bulls’ Arvid Lindblad. The Australian driver reacted quickly and slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding contact with the back of the rookie who was exiting the garage.
Racing Bulls was later handed a €5,000 fine for unsafe release.
In response to the incident, Piastri has radioed his race engineer and joked the following message: “Ah yep. It’s a good thing my underwear bottoms are black today and not white.”
The Australian was later asked about this quote following the end of Qualifying, to which he recounted the incident and said it was an “exciting” moment.
“Ah, just the Racing Bulls. He burned him coming out of the garage, so that was more exciting. That was, yeah. I mean, the car was pretty exciting to drive anyway, and I didn’t need any more in the pit lane.”
Piastri on the McLaren’s lack of pace at the 2026 F1 British GP
On his second flying lap in Qualifying 3, Piastri had set a time of 1:29.032, an alarming 0.921s behind pole sitter Kimi Antonelli.
The 25-year-old reflected that he was not shocked by the lack of pace. According to Piastri, his MCL40 was highly sensitive to the windy conditions during Qualifying at the 2026 F1 British GP.
Nonetheless, the Australian also noted that the car had the potential to fight for top positions under more consistent conditions, as evident from their performance on Friday.
“Today’s conditions in particular have definitely exposed where we think when the group is good, when things are consistent, we can be close to the fight. Yesterday, one tenth, we would have been third on the grid. So I think when things are consistent, we look ok, and we masked some of our issues, whereas today the conditions are very, very tough, there’s nowhwere to hide around here. So it’s not a huge surprise that we struggled.”
The MCL40’s main flaw
Oscar Piastri then noted that McLaren is aware of what areas it needs to improve. He added that the MCL40’s main flaw in the recent weekends was that it required very specific track conditions to perform well. The car’s performance would drastically drop when the conditions were out of its “comfort zone”.
“Yeah, I mean, I think we’ve got some clear areas we want to work on, which everyone will want to work on down the grid, but I think at the moment we clearly seem to struggle when things are a bit more difficult. We saw in Canada and Monaco where the tyre temps were difficult and tricky to get in. We struggled. When the wind is high, we struggle. When everything is just a little bit out of our comfort zone, we seem to struggle a lot. So that’s really our biggest challenge.”
Ahead of the 2026 F1 British GP, Piastri acknowledged that it would be a tough race for McLaren, especially against both Ferrari and Mercedes. However, he remains optimistic and motivated by the team’s performance during the Sprint, where teammate Lando Norris clinched P3.
“Probably yes. Mercedes are definitely a step ahead. Ferrari, we thought in Austria that they would be a step ahead as well, and they weren’t, I think, in the sprint. They looked quick but not unbeatable. So we’ll see what we can do.”
When asked about Mercedes’ revived engine trick during Qualifying, Piastri simply replied: “I didn’t even know they did it, which probably says a lot.”
