Brundle issues clear verdict on Oscar Piastri's ongoing struggles
Photo: Race Pictures
Kada Sárközi joined GPblog as an editor ahead of the 2023 Formula 1 season. He graduated with a BA in Sports Journalism in the UK and has covered Grands Prix and other F1 events live.
Former Formula 1 driver Martin Brundle was disappointed to see Oscar Piastri endure another challenging weekend this season at the Circuit of the Americas.
Piastri qualified ahead of his teammate Lando Norris for the United States Grand Prix, but unlike the defending world champion, he was unable to make up places after starting seventh.
In his Sky Sports column, Brundle also highlighted the Australian's difficulties with the current generation of cars. He wrote: "Oscar Piastri in the sister McLaren had another disappointing race, lacking front-running pace from relatively early on and finishing 52 seconds behind the winner. Oscar simply can't seem to gel with the 2026 cars and it's painful to witness after his stellar run last year."
"It's painful to witness after his stellar run last year."- Martin Brundle on Oscar Piastri's season
One driver that could not overtake the Australian during the final stint was George Russell, who has also experienced a downturn in form recently. "Piastri's struggles would heavily impact another driver having a season to forget in the shape of George Russell."
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Photo: Race Pictures
Brundle added: "Taking his five-second penalty at the first pit stop put him behind Piastri, and despite very solid initial pace on fresh tyres he simply couldn't find a way past the young Aussie and finished a full 54 seconds behind his winning team-mate in eighth place. Ouch."
Piastri told to let Norris through as McLaren reveal what led to team orders
At COTA, Piastri was also told by his team to make way for Norris. Team principal Andrea Stella explained why that was the case after the race. "We had seen during the weekend that Lando was a little bit faster than Oscar. This is a track in which Lando excels and is one of the tracks in which Oscar instead struggles a little bit more.
"This year, in particular for Oscar, is tricky because Oscar's superpower is to build; once he creates references, he can really effectively build lap after lap. But here every lap is different, so these are the conditions that challenge Oscar and actually are the conditions where Lando uses his own superpower, which is being very adaptive to the conditions, especially as the car slides."
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The Italian team boss concluded: "So, given this context, we discussed before the race that if Lando was behind Oscar, and Oscar could not keep up with the cars ahead, then we could have given Lando a chance or an opportunity to see if we could attack the cars ahead – and that's what we did."
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