Stella: Piastri could not have finished above sixth at Sepang

At the rain-delayed 2026 Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, held at Sepang on Sunday, 4 October, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said he did not think Oscar Piastri could have finished above sixth even if every team decision had been right. He rated McLaren’s car package fourth in performance over the weekend.

Piastri finished sixth, 9.454 seconds behind winner Max Verstappen; Lando Norris was ninth, 13.993 seconds behind.

During the delayed starting procedure, McLaren initially had both cars on medium slicks. Before the standing start, Piastri switched to intermediates while Norris stayed on mediums; when the race then got under way, the track was still too wet for slicks.

Stella said McLaren misjudged when dry tyres would become faster than intermediates: they took longer than expected to work, costing both drivers time. His criticism concerned the opening slick-tyre choice; Piastri said the subsequent switch to intermediates was the right call. The Safety Car early in the race, Piastri said, helped limit the time lost in that opening tyre gamble.

McLaren said Piastri had cut a 7.5-second deficit to Charles Leclerc to under two seconds when an earlier Virtual Safety Car was deployed. Piastri later called the final Safety Car a shame because he was catching Leclerc.

Before the final restart, as the pack bunched behind the Safety Car, Norris took avoiding action when cars ahead slowed, ran through the gravel and fell to 11th. He recovered to ninth after racing resumed. Stella said the excursion could have cost McLaren a few more points with Norris, but would not have changed his assessment of the team’s overall performance.

After the race, Piastri said he was reasonably happy with his own performance but that McLaren had not made all the right calls and lacked pace to do much more; he identified speed as the biggest problem. He described Red Bull as very fast at Sepang and placed McLaren and Ferrari in a similar pace bracket, short of race-winning pace. McLaren needed to improve, he said.

Stella said direct rivals, including Red Bull, had taken a significant step forward and that McLaren needed to review its last two races and respond. He could not yet judge whether Singapore would suit McLaren better, but said the race would give the team a better answer on its competitiveness.