Piastri sees progress with McLaren’s 2026 car, but is not yet at his target level

Adapting to McLaren’s 2026 car is starting to click for Oscar Piastri, but he says he has not yet reached the level he wants. Speaking ahead of the United States Grand Prix, he said the latest triple-header brought him closer to his preferred form, while he still aims much higher.

Piastri said some of the things that had worked well for him at points in 2025 have become weaknesses on many weekends in 2026. He has been working to adapt his driving and identify what he needs more or less from the car to go faster. The difficulty cannot be fixed quickly, he said, despite several approaches being tried.

The Baku–Malaysia–Singapore run included a sharp setback followed by two top-six finishes: an error dropped Piastri from the top three to 13th in Baku, then he finished sixth in Malaysia and fifth in Singapore. He said the three-race stretch left him closer to where he wants to be.

Asked whether the Circuit of The Americas would suit the car, Piastri said it was difficult to tell. He pointed to the circuit’s combination of high- and low-speed corners: McLaren has generally been stronger in the faster turns and struggled in the slower ones this year, he said. Piastri hopes a few new parts will help, but also said the team lacks some performance relative to the teams around it.