Oscar Piastri suffers unwanted deja vu as same McLaren ‘story’ repeats

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri described his seventh-place finish at the United States Grand Prix as the "story of the year" after enduring persistent pace struggles. Switching to a one-stop strategy, Piastri finished over 20 seconds behind teammate Lando Norris and 52.674 seconds adrift of race winner Kimi Antonelli in Austin, extending his podium drought to 15 races.

Piastri explained that extracting consistent performance from the MCL40 remains very difficult, noting that his smooth driving style conflicts with the aggressive inputs required by the 2026 machinery. Despite losing time battling traffic and an erratic Isack Hadjar, Piastri found a small positive in successfully defending seventh position against Mercedes driver George Russell.