Piastri: McLaren struggled to get its car into the right setup window

McLaren’s car can be “very quick” in the right setup window, Oscar Piastri says, but the team struggled to get it there for much of the two weekends before Singapore. He made the assessment during Thursday’s media sessions ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix.

Piastri said Malaysia’s grip level had caught McLaren out “a little bit”, but he was unsure whether it fully explained why the team had been a bit uncompetitive. He described the issue as “a number of different things.”

In comments on McLaren’s Sepang performance, team principal Andrea Stella said the team saw no anomaly in its data and that upgrades had increased the car’s potential. He also said some rivals might have made bigger development steps; McLaren’s on-track competitiveness, he said, suggested it had lost some ground relative to them.

Looking to Singapore, Piastri hoped McLaren could make things a little easier over the weekend. He noted that Singapore’s circuit and surface were very different.