Opinion: After a bruising title near-miss, Oscar Piastri’s smartest play is to double down on McLaren
Oscar Piastri walked into Abu Dhabi with a shot at the crown and left with a sting that’ll stick through the winter. He led the 2025 title race by 34 points after Zandvoort. He finished it third, behind Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, 11 points shy of the big one. That gap gnaws more when you remember Monza. We’ll get to Monza.
The comedown has fed the rumour mill. Ferrari were whispered. Lately, Red Bull. 2027 keeps popping up in conversations around the paddock coffee machines. Tempting? Of course. Wise? Not right now.
Here’s the thing about 2026: nobody knows. New rules, new engines, new aero… and a very real chance that the current pecking order gets thrown into a blender. If you’re a driver with title-winning potential, you don’t gamble your prime on a hunch. You sit tight with proven race-winning hardware and a team you understand, then reassess once the dust settles.
McLaren offers exactly that. Continuity is a commodity heading into a regulation reset, and Woking has it in spades. The Mercedes power unit stays, the driver line-up stays, and there’s no boardroom shuffle to destabilise the factory. Compare that to others juggling new projects, restructures or fresh partnerships and you see why Piastri’s baseline looks enviable.
And let’s be honest: Piastri had enough car underneath him this year to take it deep with Norris and Verstappen. For a driver in just his third F1 season, that’s concrete proof he’s already operating in rarefied air. The ceiling’s still a few floors above.
So why the noise about favouritism and exits? Part of it is the normal heat of a title fight made spicier by a few strategic calls that left bruises. McLaren’s “let them race” mantra was tested at times: Melbourne’s hold position, Imola’s offset strategy that swung late to Norris, and Hungary’s split calls that handed Lando the win over Oscar. Then came Monza, the one that still rankles.
After slow stops muddied the picture, the team asked Piastri to cede second to Norris. Three points lost on the day, a six-point swing between them. In a title fight decided by 11, that stings. It also lit the fuse on a ragged swing through the Americas: a scrappy Baku with a practice shunt and a lap-one incident after a poor launch, then needle with Norris in Singapore and in the US Sprint. Piastri called it a “perfect storm.” From the outside, it looked like a young driver carrying a mental hangover while the margins narrowed.
The suggestion that McLaren put a thumb on the scales for Norris has been easy to spin but hard to prove. When strategies diverge and results skew, narratives write themselves. What matters is whether Piastri believes he can win a title from within. Based on the season he just logged, he can—and he knows precisely which internal conversations need to happen this winter.
Would a switch fix any of that? Ferrari is Ferrari: alluring, demanding, sometimes combustible. Red Bull is Red Bull: Verstappen’s kingdom, with an all-new in-house power unit coming with Ford for 2026 and a structure that, while incredibly successful, has never been shy about making the team revolve around its main man. For next season, Verstappen is set to be paired with Isack Hadjar. That either makes Piastri the Dutchman’s understudy down the line, or a replacement if the stars ever truly misalign in Milton Keynes. If it’s the latter, what does that say about the competitiveness of the package he’d be inheriting?
There’s another layer. Red Bull hasn’t historically shown much appetite for pairing Max with a driver who can genuinely threaten him over a season. If you’re Oscar, you trade certainty and a team built for two live title shots for… what, exactly? Promise and politics? That’s a hard sell.
None of this is to say McLaren is perfect. No front-running outfit is under title pressure. The Monza call will sit on a wall in the Woking debrief room until someone rips it down. But look at the whole picture: McLaren pivoted early toward 2026, trusts its power unit partner, and has two drivers fast enough to split strategy and still win. That’s a platform. Piastri’s job now is to convert a bitter November into a clearer, sharper March.
He’s got the chops. The racecraft is tidy, the qualifying peaks are getting higher, and the rough patches this year were more about context than capability. Give him cleaner weekends in the crunch and he’ll outscore anyone in orange. Including Norris? Why not. They’ve traded blows all year. The next step for Oscar is to harden the edges—push back internally when it matters, make his own luck on the pit wall, and turn the odd missed call into a self-made overcut.
The market will be there in 2026 and beyond. If McLaren’s 2026 car lands wide of the mark, he’ll be one of the first names on every shortlist. If it lands on target, he won’t need to go anywhere. Either way, the smart play is the same: keep the pen capped, keep the head down, and make Woking the place where the next title fight starts on his terms.
