Piastri turns to ‘experimentation’ to close Norris gap

Oscar Piastri says he is preparing to take a more “experimental” route in his bid to bridge the performance gap to his McLaren teammate Lando Norris.

The contrast has become increasingly stark this summer at team papaya. Norris has swept to victory in the last two Grands Prix, while Piastri could manage only sixth at Zandvoort, crossing the line more than 30 seconds behind his team-mate.

The result extended a difficult run for the Aussie, who now sits 55 points behind Norris and three places adrift in the championship.

Worse still, it has now been a full year since the nine-time Grand Prix winner last stood on the top step of an F1 podium.

A search for the right answers

The Zandvoort weekend prompted McLaren and Piastri to take a closer look at the ingredients behind his recent struggles.

Rather than pointing towards one glaring weakness, however, the Australian says the investigation has revealed a much more complicated picture.

Asked at Monza whether that analysis had produced any answers, Piastri acknowledged that progress had been made, while stressing that there is no single culprit responsible for his difficulties.

“Yes I think we have, but it's not kind of one problem that keeps recurring. Every race is facing something a little bit different,” he explained.

“We need to try and find the big picture for myself and the team around me. But I think the positive from Zandvoort was that the qualifying at least was significantly better and closer to the level it should be at.

“The process that we go through is then trying to translate that into the race, and of course Zandvoort was challenging. So the main focus now is doing some experimentation to find some things that will make us quicker. But I'm confident that we're finding the right answers, and can find a way.”

That willingness to experiment could prove crucial as Piastri attempts to close the gap.

The 2026 machinery appears to have exposed some uncomfortable characteristics for the Australian, with the way he naturally approaches driving not always aligning with what the latest-generation McLaren demands.

A complicated battle for confidence

Piastri has previously excelled at carrying speed through high-speed corners, but this year's power-unit regulations and the more demanding characteristics of the 2026 cars may have altered the equation.

Low-grip conditions have also exposed some of his weaknesses.

Yet Piastri insists there is no quick driving-style adjustment capable of suddenly solving the problem. Instead, he believes the challenge involves finding a setup and driving direction that allow him to feel sufficiently comfortable to extract the car's potential.

“It's not as straightforward as just, ‘Oh, I'll brake a bit earlier’. This year in particular, how I actually like to drive the car is not necessarily the best way to drive these cars,” he said.

“Sometimes it happens, sometimes not, and I think that's why it’s a challenge because it's not been the same issue that we've run into every time.

“For me it's just about trying to find that right direction, the things that make this car work. At points I’ve been able to find it, and at other points we've tried a lot and not been able to find it.

“So it’s not as simple as that but when you're comfortable in the car, everything becomes a lot easier. It's very easy to have a spiral in both directions.

“A positive spiral where things are comfortable, you've got more capacity to think about it, and then you can run a bit more subconscious, and it just becomes easier.

• Read also: Stella explains why Piastri has lost ground to Norris

“Then if you’re uncomfortable, you're thinking about it a lot more and you're not driving on instinct anymore. That’s why it can quite quickly unravel. I don't think we're at that point by any means, but it's certainly not come particularly easily so far in finding solutions for it.

“We will find solutions eventually but it’s more about how we can make things a bit quicker and adapt a bit quicker through the weekend. But there’s a lot of various things. It's not as simple as as "I struggle with this one thing." It's a lot of things combined.”

For Piastri, then, Monza is less about finding one magical fix than continuing a painstaking process of discovery.

With Norris setting the benchmark on the other side of the McLaren garage, the Australian's experimental approach could now be his best route towards stopping the performance gap from becoming a permanent fixture.

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