What has Oscar Piastri said about his 2026 season?

He has said he is making progress despite setbacks, and has described how McLaren have supported him during a difficult campaign.

Which setbacks has Piastri faced in 2026?

That has not been made public. The races, results or incidents he has in mind have not been identified, and no list of low points has been set out.

Has McLaren responded to Piastri's comments?

The team has not publicly expanded on his account, and has issued no statement of its own about the difficulties he has described.

Why does Piastri's assessment of the season matter?

It is the clearest public indication of how he views the year and his relationship with McLaren. This is analysis rather than a reported claim: a driver's framing of a hard season is read as a sign of whether he and the team still agree on direction.

F1

Oscar Piastri says he is making progress in difficult 2026 McLaren season

The McLaren driver says a season containing setbacks has still moved him forward, and credits the team's backing for it.

By Sportsback1h ago

2025 Japan GP - McLaren - Oscar Piastri - FP1

Liauzh · CC BY-SA 4.0

Oscar Piastri has said he is making progress through a difficult 2026 Formula 1 season with McLaren, and has described the support the team has given him along the way. His assessment was made public on 23 September 2026.

The claim is a simple one: a season containing setbacks has still moved him forward. It comes from Piastri himself, in his own account of the year, rather than from anything McLaren have announced. The team has not issued a statement of its own about his remarks.

Oscar Piastri, Australia — Oscar PiastriMcLaren · AustraliaDriver

What Piastri has said

The detail is thin. Piastri has talked about how McLaren supported him and about the setbacks he has encountered, but the specific races, results and incidents involved have not been set out. It is not clear which weekends he regards as the low points of the campaign, nor what he and the team altered in response to them.

Why the framing matters

Oscar Piastri - 2017 British F4 Knockhill (Sunday, R4 podium)

This part is analysis rather than reported fact. How a driver describes a hard season is read inside a team as a signal about the working relationship: a driver who calls a struggling year progress is saying the direction is agreed and the problem is being worked, not managed around. In a sport where a single season shapes how a driver and a team are judged, that framing carries weight beyond the garage.

McLaren's side of it

As Piastri tells it, McLaren's contribution has been to back him through the difficult stretch rather than to rebuild around it. The team has not publicly expanded on that account. Nothing has been announced about changes to his programme, his engineering group or his role in the team's work, and none should be assumed from his comments.

What is not yet known

Which races, results or incidents Piastri counts as the setbacks.
What, if anything, McLaren changed in response to them.
Whether McLaren will add to Piastri's account publicly.
How the rest of the 2026 season is expected to run for him.

Piastri has not put numbers on the season, and McLaren have neither confirmed nor contradicted what he has said. Until one of them does, the argument that the year represents progress rests on the driver's own reading of it.

What happens next

The remaining rounds of the 2026 season are where the claim gets tested. Piastri's position is effectively that the trend matters more than any single result; the races ahead are where that either holds up or does not.

The confirmed position is narrow. A driver says he is moving forward, and says his team has helped him do it. The scale of the setbacks, the response to them and the numbers behind either remain unstated.

Frequently asked questions

What has Oscar Piastri said about his 2026 season?: He has said he is making progress despite setbacks, and has described how McLaren have supported him during a difficult campaign.
Which setbacks has Piastri faced in 2026?: That has not been made public. The races, results or incidents he has in mind have not been identified, and no list of low points has been set out.
Has McLaren responded to Piastri's comments?: The team has not publicly expanded on his account, and has issued no statement of its own about the difficulties he has described.
Why does Piastri's assessment of the season matter?: It is the clearest public indication of how he views the year and his relationship with McLaren. This is analysis rather than a reported claim: a driver's framing of a hard season is read as a sign of whether he and the team still agree on direction.