Andrea Stella and Oscar Piastri reflected on a much stronger race for the Australian as he finished 5th for McLaren in the 2026 F1 Italian GP.
It had been a very tricky couple of rounds for Oscar Piastri at Hungary and Zandvoort.
Although he led the first two stints at the Hungaroring, teammate Lando Norris was glued to him throughout them. While the incident with Carlos Sainz probably cost him the lead, the reality is that the Brit had much superior race pace once he got into clean air in P1.
At Zandvoort, he ran in 3rd in the first stint, a few seconds behind Lando Norris. That was as good as it got for Oscar Piastri. The remainder of the race was horrendous from a pace and position point of view. In the end, he finished P6, a full 32s adrift of his race winning stablemate.
Low grip difficulties
Ever since his rookie season in 2023, the 25-year-old has struggled on low grip surfaces in the main. While he has improved on the tyre management side, the driver from Melbourne has still had struggles in adapting to the machinery underneath him when it is tricky to drive. The rear of the MCL40 in particular has been a weakness in 2026.
Nonetheless, Monza was a step forward. He outqualified his World Champion teammate and was P3, before a grid penalty for impeding Liam Lawson dropped him to 6th on the grid. Piastri was still two spots ahead of Norris, nonetheless.
Having fought hard against Hamilton and Verstappen for good chunks of the race for 3rd, the Australian lost out to car #1 on the final lap after some yo-yo racing before that.
Critically, the race pace between the pair was very close when both had clean air. It shows the gains for Oscar Piastri versus the previous two rounds.
Andrea Stella on Oscar Piastri’s steps forward at 2026 F1 Italian GP
Speaking in his print media session after the 2026 F1 Italian GP, Andrea Stella credited Oscar Piastri for the work he has been putting in to try and get on top of his limitations.
“I think it’s a race that confirms a trajectory with Oscar.
“We’ve had a couple of races in which we saw that for the requirements of this year Oscar, especially in the race when the car slides, we needed to make some adaptations to his natural driving style. We kind of adopted the same approach that we used with Lando last year and we saw pretty radically some developments.
“We were happy to see how competitive Oscar was in Zandvoort in qualifying trim [a tenth off pole]. We said we need to do a little bit more for the race trim. We put in some work, and it’s good that this work seems like it’s been useful here in Monza.
“Oscar has always been very sharp when it comes to using the power unit in situations like today. So I think we just confirmed the progress.
“We always said, I think I’ve been very consistent from this point of view, that for Oscar this was a technical effort. But it has to do with combining your natural execution in the car with what is the demand of the car to be fast.“
Adaptation
With significantly less downforce than the absolutely rapid 2025 cars, it is a team effort by McLaren to try and work with the Australian to adapt his style when required to maximise performance from the current machinery.
Stella is confident the performance shown by Piastri at the F1 Italian GP will be a regular theme across the rest of 2026.
“Sometimes with Oscar we talk like ‘we don’t have to feel the car good, we have to feel the car fast’. And we needed to bridge a little bit the gap between these two, considering the requirements of this year’s Formula 1.
“So very happy, very pleased with the progress that Oscar is making. I think he will have a very strong second half of the season.”
Oscar Piastri happy with the gains made at Italian GP
Following those extremely difficult races in Hungary and Zandvoort in terms of outright pace and struggling with the hardest tyre, Oscar Piastri was much happier speaking in the print media pen post-race at Monza.
The driver of car #81 explained that why there is still work to be done, he was generally quite satisfied. Instead of having to worry about big changes to try and find a better balance, it was back to normal little set-up tweaks for his McLaren at the Temple of Speed.
“I think so. I think there’s always still things to learn for sure.
“It wasn’t perfect in terms of pace. But it was a hell of a lot better than what it has been.
”And I think operationally this weekend we didn’t do a fantastic job, but it was nice to at least be just talking about the normal bits and pieces you can fine-tune rather than trying to reinvent things again. That was the biggest positive.
“We’ll keep working hard to keep improving our level and hopefully be fighting for the top step on circuits where we know we’ll be a little bit stronger.”
