Brown and Piastri’s Rebirth: 'He Is Becoming the One From Before Again'

Zak Brown has launched a message of optimism about Oscar Piastri's future at McLaren. The British team's CEO considers that the Australian driver is recovering the confidence and performance that made him one of the most promising drivers on the grid, after an especially complicated start to the 2026 season: "I think so; he is becoming the driver I know again. With these cars, the field has gotten a bit mixed up, right? Lewis Hamilton is getting more out of the Ferrari now. George Russell got more out of the car last year than Kimi Antonelli; that has changed. I think these cars are so complex that some drivers have adapted a little faster than others, but I like what I'm seeing from Oscar; he feels more confident and in control. I like where our two drivers are now," Brown declared at the Friday press conference in Singapore.

Piastri's season has been marked by his struggle to adapt to the new generation of cars. After finishing third in the drivers' championship in 2025, the Australian has struggled to extract consistent performance from the MCL40. Although he has achieved two podiums this year, he has not matched the pace of his teammate, Lando Norris, who has added two Grand Prix victories and has beaten him in qualifying in 11 of the 17 rounds contested so far.

Andrea Stella, McLaren team boss, had already explained that Piastri was having difficulties driving by "pure instinct" in certain conditions, a situation that the driver himself acknowledged before the Azerbaijan Grand Prix: "Many of the things that had worked for me previously don't seem to work this year, so it's about trying to find others that do. I'm making progress on that, but it is not as simple as finding a direction that works for you all the time. You need to adapt and change things constantly," Piastri explained.

Despite the ups and downs, the Australian has shown signs of recovery in the last races, at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia he finished sixth after a complicated afternoon in Sepang where a decision to start on medium tires in wet conditions forced him to enter the pits earlier than planned, however he showed himself satisfied with his own performance, later at the Singapore Grand Prix, he finished fifth after an eventful race, in which he retired from the Sprint due to a crash with Norris on the last lap and suffered a slow puncture on Sunday that forced him to make an unscheduled stop, despite everything, he managed to overtake Hamilton on the last lap to take fifth position.

"It was quite reasonable, I would say; I think we simply didn't have enough pace. We couldn't follow Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc; I think Kimi was also a little faster than us. There wasn't much we could do beyond where we finished," Piastri reflected. Brown, for his part, trusts that McLaren can maintain its progress in the final stretch of the season: "The objective is to arrive at every weekend with the possibility of winning; we feel more in control of things than in the last races, and we won the two before those. It shows how competitive the sport is and how fast the top four teams, and the whole grid, move up and down the competitiveness ladder. Our objective is to try to arrive at every race weekend and win, but that is easier said than done," Brown concluded.