McLaren put Piastri’s Austin slump under the microscope as title fight tightens
If Oscar Piastri felt the heat in Austin, he wasn’t alone. McLaren have gone back to Woking with more questions than answers after their championship leader turned in a flat weekend at the United States Grand Prix — and Andrea Stella is determined to find out whether the deficit was in the car, the cockpit, or a bit of both.
Piastri arrived in Texas with a 22-point cushion over Lando Norris in the 2025 standings. He left with that advantage trimmed to 14 and Max Verstappen looming at 40 points back after chalking up a third win in four. Five races to go. The room for error just shrank.
The flashpoint was the sprint: for the second weekend running, Piastri and Norris tripped over each other on lap one and both retired. In the grand prix, Piastri simply never looked at ease, trailing Norris by roughly three-tenths across the sessions before salvaging fifth on Sunday while his teammate pressed further forward.
Paddock whispers suggested Piastri took a conservative approach at a circuit that punishes caution. COTA’s tyre deg is brutal; the lap comes to you when you commit, ride the understeer, accept the oversteer, and manage the chaos rather than tiptoe around it. If you hesitate, the surface cooks the tyres anyway — you just end up slow and still sliding.
Stella didn’t hide from that reading, but he isn’t laying it all at his driver’s feet either. The McLaren boss said the team is combing through Piastri’s MCL39 to make sure the car matched intent — setup, floor spec, the whole lot. “We want to be completely happy with the car side,” he told media post-race, underscoring that they believe there were a couple of tenths to be found that Piastri couldn’t unlock in qualifying and the race.
At the same time, Stella flagged a very specific area for growth: low-grip confidence. When the track offers little purchase, the fastest lap often comes from leaning into the instability — braking hard enough to flirt with a lock-up, turning in despite the front washing wide, catching the rear as it steps. It’s the uncomfortable end of the spectrum, and Stella thinks Piastri can move the needle there. The tone wasn’t critical so much as expectant: by his standards, that improvement needs to — and will — come quickly.
Piastri, for his part, called Austin “the odd one out” compared to recent rough patches in Baku and Singapore. He knows there was more on the table. The upside? He and McLaren have “quite a lot of information,” as Stella put it, to feed into a fast turnaround.
Which brings us to Mexico City. The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is a strange beast at altitude — thin air reduces drag and downforce, braking zones feel longer, traction phases get tricky, and tyre temperatures can vanish or spike in a heartbeat. It rewards drivers who commit on a knife edge and teams who bring a car that behaves when the air won’t help. In other words, it’s another exam in precisely the area McLaren and Piastri want to tidy up.
There’s also the matter of avoiding friendly fire. Two consecutive weekends with first-lap contact between the orange cars is two too many for any title bid. Norris has shrugged off the scuffs and is driving with the kind of rhythm that forces a response. Verstappen, meanwhile, is Verstappen — relentless when a scent of opportunity wafts through the garage doors.
None of that is cause for panic at McLaren, but it does sharpen the timeline. This season has tilted on small margins all year; if Austin was a wobble rather than a trend, Mexico is the place to prove it. McLaren believe there were tenths in the car that didn’t make the timing screens. Piastri believes he’s better than fifth with a three-tenth headwind. Both can be right — but only if they stitch it together this weekend.
The stakes are clear enough. Keep the points bleeding and the fight turns three-way in a hurry. Stop it now and the narrative becomes a blip at a track that caught them out. The team has done its homework. Now we find out what’s in the car — and what’s in the driver.
