Stella confirms McLaren shifts resources to Piastri after identifying key 2026 weakness

Speaking after the Spanish Grand Prix, Stella identified the core of Piastri's struggles as "purely technical," with the 25-year-old Australian still "driving and thinking" rather than relying on instinct behind the wheel of the MCL40.

The gap between McLaren's two drivers has widened steadily. Norris has climbed to fourth in the standings with 186 points, while Piastri is seventh, 66 points behind his teammate. While the reigning world champion has two Grand Prix wins this season, in Budapest and Zandvoort, Piastri has yet to stand on the top step of the podium. He has not returned to the podium since Miami, having been outqualified by his teammate in nine of the last eleven races. The contrast is striking after the pair finished just 13 points apart last year.

The 2026 regulations cut the level of downforce the car produces compared to the previous ground-effect regulations, which is at odds with Piastri's smooth, fluent driving style. According to Stella, that mental effort costs Piastri "a couple of tenths of a second, because you sort of have to process rather than drive through pure instinct."

"We need to execute better and then at the same time we need to get more in tune between Oscar and the MCL40 because still Oscar is driving and thinking," Stella told GPblog, among others, after the Spanish Grand Prix.

He was firm in dismissing any suggestion of a mental block: "I don't think it has anything to do with any psychological kind of opportunity. This is purely technical.

The resource shift follows a familiar template at McLaren. In the first half of 2025, Norris was the driver who struggled while Piastri delivered five of McLaren's first seven victories. The team then shifted engineering resources toward Norris, who went on to win the drivers' title. Stella expects the same process to produce a similar response from Piastri.

With eighth rounds (given that the Qatar and Abu Dhabi GPs end up being replaced by Imola, as this website previously reported, ed.) remaining and the Azerbaijan Grand Prix next on the calendar, the reigning constructors' champions face a clear test: whether the fix that unlocked Norris in 2025 can produce the same results for Piastri before the season slips further away.