Oscar Piastri misses title-fight pressure despite more relaxed 2026 season

Oscar Piastri says he misses the pressure of fighting for the Formula 1 championship, despite finding his 2026 season more relaxed. The McLaren driver said being outside the title fight was not where he wanted to be.

Piastri is seventh in the drivers' standings and has yet to win this season.

“But that stress that you have in a championship fight is the feeling you want because it means you're fighting for something that is what your goal is,” said Piastri.

Piastri identified beating Red Bull in the constructors' championship as McLaren's main objective. McLaren is fourth, 17 points behind Red Bull.

“It's not going to be an easy task for sure, but I think it's possible. I think the car took a step forward this weekend, so hopefully that keeps going,” said Piastri of McLaren's prospects after Brazil.

Lando Norris won in Brazil, while Piastri recovered to sixth after being eliminated in Q2.

Piastri led the standings for much of the previous season before finishing third in the 2025 championship behind Norris and Max Verstappen.

McLaren has attributed its inability to extract the same performance from its Mercedes power unit as the factory team to customer-team integration issues. Piastri said the team initially focused on getting the most from the power unit before investigating the car more deeply after the opening races and rule tweaks.

McLaren's technical leadership has identified sharp downforce losses through medium- and high-speed corners as a persistent handicap on the MCL40. Piastri said understanding what needed changing had taken time, implementing those changes was difficult, and progress on the handling problems remained slow.