Piastri admits McLaren's MCL40 demands near-perfect laps as team chases upgrade answers

Oscar Piastri has acknowledged that McLaren’s MCL40 demands a near-qualifying-level effort on every lap, describing the car’s sensitivity as a persistent challenge heading into the final rounds of the 2025 Formula 1 season.

Speaking to media in Mexico City — a circuit where he endured one of his most frustrating weekends in 2024 — Piastri said both he and team-mate Lando Norris are grappling with a car that punishes any deviation from a narrow operating window. “The way you have to drive it, it’s quite specific, and quite a narrow window,” he said. “So naturally when you’ve got more things outside of that that make it tricky, like bumps or windy conditions, stuff like that, then it only adds to the challenge.”

McLaren introduced the first elements of its final upgrade package of the season at the United States GP, fitting a new front suspension geometry alongside rear diffuser tweaks. Further components are expected to follow as soon as they can be shipped to the remaining rounds. The team has not yet been able to fully assess whether the changes have raised the car’s performance ceiling as intended.

Piastri described Austin as a step back after a productive triple-header that had shown genuine progress. “Sometimes you need to take two steps forward and one step back to find your feet and experiment with things,” he said. “The triple header before Austin was a very good step in the right direction, but there’s still room to go on top of that.”

Despite the difficulties, the Australian remains measured in his assessment. “The car is faster now than it was before Austin, but obviously our competitors are very quick as well, so we know we’ve still got ground to make up.”

With the 2026 drivers’ championship no longer a realistic target for Piastri, his focus has shifted to two longer-term goals: improving his results at circuits that have historically exposed weaknesses in his driving style, and feeding the lessons from the current upgrade cycle into the development of next year’s car. “We have to find a way in the next few months,” he said. “Hopefully it’s not years, but obviously there’s fundamental aspects of these cars that aren’t going to change.”

Last season, Piastri’s title bid faded across the final run of races on low-grip circuits — tracks that tended to suit Norris’s more adaptable style. Mexico City, which opens another demanding stretch of the calendar, represents an early test of whether the team’s latest changes have begun to address those underlying sensitivities.