Oscar Piastri reveals the truth behind McLaren’s significant decline in performance.
As the Bahrain Grand Prix approached, the McLaren Formula 1 team aimed to mount a strong challenge against Mercedes and Scuderia Ferrari at the front of the pack. However, the team faced a significant wake-up call. Following a flawed tyre strategy on the opening lap and a concerning lack of overall speed, Oscar Piastri barely managed to secure a sixth-place finish at the Sepang International Circuit.
With McLaren now a staggering 240 points adrift of the leading Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team in the Constructors' Championship, the urgency to identify solutions is intensifying as they head into the Singapore Grand Prix.
McLaren's set-up window difficulties
During Thursday's media engagements under the Marina Bay lights, Piastri was asked directly if the highly abrasive, rugged asphalt in Malaysia significantly disrupted the aerodynamics of the MCL40. Although the 2026 technical regulations introduced flatter vehicle floors to reduce sensitivity to ride height variations, the Australian driver confirmed that surface grip is still a crucial element.
"Yeah, I mean, it's always tricky to determine. I mean, particularly with the previous generation of cars. Yes, the texture of the track made a considerable difference," he told reporters. "And it's still going to influence this year's cars."
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
However, he refrained from attributing the team’s substantial 0.733-second average pace shortfall to the frontrunners solely to the Sepang asphalt.
"I'm not convinced that's the complete reason behind our lack of competitiveness," Piastri acknowledged. "But certainly, we expected to perform better in Malaysia than we did. So I believe it's a combination of various factors."
Moments of brilliance
Despite the overarching difficulties in keeping pace with the race leaders, the Australian highlighted that the McLaren MCL40 remains exceptionally quick when the engineers successfully optimize the intricate set-up parameters.
"At certain moments during the race, we appeared very fast," Oscar Piastri reflected. "You know, during my second Hard stint, I was among the quickest. And Lando as well in his softs. We were essentially the fastest cars on the track at one point."
The core challenge confronting the Woking-based team is consistency.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls
"So, this aligns with the rest of the season. If you can get the car into the appropriate window, it's extremely fast," Piastri observed. "But we’ve had trouble achieving that for much of the last two weekends."
With the smooth street circuit of Singapore offering a wholly different engineering challenge, the Australian driver hopes the team can finally discover its optimal setup without the complications posed by the rough asphalt.
"So hopefully we can simplify things a bit this weekend," Piastri concluded. "It's clearly a very different track, different surface. But yes, I think the grip levels in Malaysia definitely caught us off guard a little bit."
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