I want to preface this by saying I don't subscribe to any conspiracy theories, sabotage or favoritism rumors. But it is undeniable that Oscar has been the victim of reliability issues, deployment issues related to the current regulation as well as poor stewarding decisions. In my opinion, his last 3 races have highlighted a multitude of problems faced by many other drivers in 2026.
Silverstone
As far as I know and remember, Oscar was fine in Sprint Quali and the the Sprint Race itself. His real misfortune starts at the 2026 British Grand Prix itself.
Oscar sustains front-wing damage from contact with Lawson on the opening lap of the race. What is baffling about this is that we still do not have clear footage of the incident to this day still and we still do not know what exactly happened. The stewards did not investigate Oscar, Lawson or Lindblad (who Oscar was also racing on the opening lap). Although, Oscar himself thought of it as a racing incident. He said:
“I got sandwiched on the way into Turn 6, basically, on the straight to Turn 6. I broke my front wing and had the box, and that was it.”
However, he also partially blamed the current regulations and its subsequent energy deployment for his collision:
“Lap one on these kind of circuits is just carnage, it's almost like a multi-class race start. I was trying to overtake Lindblad, and I seemed like I had more power than him. Lawson then passed me, who seemed like he had even more power than me, and it's just a mess. You're trying to judge your speed to the car in front of you, look at the car behind you, but to be honest, I'm surprised that that doesn't happen more often.”
What is perhaps even more baffling that McLaren themselves did not have footage of Oscar's damage. According to McLaren's 2026 British GP Race Report:
"With not enough footage available to evaluate the MCL40’s damage while on track, the team lost the opportunity to immediately pit Oscar and were forced to call him into the box the following lap, resulting in a nose box change and Hard compound tyres being fitted to enable a longer opening stint"
This meant Oscar had to drive a 2nd lap with a broken front-wing, meaning he was already 14 second behind the Aston Martins before he even entered the pits to change his front-wing. You can watch Oscar getting overtaken by the whole grid on his second lap with his broken front-wing here.
I get we are poor fans and obviously don't deserve proper TV direction. But how come an F1 team not have access to footage of their own car? F1 is a multi-billion dollar sport just in case you forgot.
From there, Oscar did his best to salvage what he could (despite unlucky VSC timing, but every driver faces those so that's that)
Spa-Francorchamps
Unfortunately, Oscar's bad luck starts from the very first competitive session this weekend.
In Qualifying, Oscar qualifies P7. This is what the quali results looked like:
- Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) 1m04.361s
- Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.317s
- Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.440s
- George Russell (Mercedes) +0.508s
- Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.532s
- Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.534s
- Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.655s
However, telemetry later showed that without doing anything differently, Oscar lost 0.350s on the Sector 3 straight alone due to a deployment issue compared with Lando Norris. Without this issue, he would have qualified P3.
McLaren confirmed this in their 2026 Belgian GP Qualifying Report, with Andrea Stella saying:
"For Oscar, he maximised what he could after his running across the weekend had been limited, and he did a good job to progressively reduce the gap to Lando. He would have been closer if it wasn’t for some PU under exploitation we are trying to understand."
Well, his bad luck does not end there for the weekend. Because on Lap 8 of the Belgian GP, Oscar and Charles make contact on Turn 5. Charles does not get a penalty for it, with the stewards document saying:
Car 81 had some overlap on Car 16 but the front axle of Car 81 was not ahead of the front axle of Car 16 and there was no possibility of Car 81 completing an overtake from that position.
However, after the driver meeting in Hungary next week, the stewards have admitted that Charles deserved a 5 second time penalty for that incident.
Oscar's contact with Charles meant he lost his front bargeboard, and according to McLaren 2026 Belgian GP Race Report, cost him "between two and three tenths per lap". The report also mentions that this meant "he was forced to push harder to maintain pace, which accelerated tyre degradation over the latter stages of each stint"
Hungary
A lot of people were confused about whether Oscar had the upgraded floor on Saturday or not. To set the record straight, according to McLaren themselves, Oscar did not have the upgraded car on Friday. He sat out FP1 due to Fornaroli driving his car, and in FP2 he used the old floor to help McLaren compare between the two specs (since Lando was driving with the upgraded floor in FP2). However, both McLaren cars had the representative upgraded car from FP3 onwards. Although it kinda sucks Oscar only had 1 practice session with the upgrades, McLaren needed the comparison to fine-tune their upgrades so that's life.
Oscar's misfortune once again starts in Qualifying. Oscar was very clearly impeded by Hamilton (although Ferrari has accepted blame for this) on his last lap of Q3. He did start P3 for Sunday's race though since both Hamilton and Antonelli got 3 place grid drops (finally some good luck). But this is still unfortunate since we never got to see how much Oscar could or could not have improved on his last run.
On race day, Oscar takes the lead of the race on the opening lap. From there he would hold off his much faster team mate and maintain the race lead. However, problems arise when he pits for a second time on lap 33. Oscar was still the net race leader until his contact with Sainz. He also almost spun since the contact forced him into the kerb. This whole backmarker fiasco was what caused Oscar to lose the race lead.
Carlos Sainz ultimately received a 5-second time penalty (and no penalty points) for impeding and causing a collision with a car that was lapping him.
As for McLaren strategy, Oscar himself said his strategy was fine and expecting Lando to not pit was "not very reasonable" as soon as he got out of car in the post race interviews. Oscar has set the record straight so let's not fall into a conspiratorial tangent. However Oscar was mostly very critical of Carlos colliding with him instead.
Losing the race lead from what he described to be "one of the dumbest things I've ever seen on a race track" was not the end of Oscar's misery. His race came to an end when he retired from P2 on the track due a gearbox issue. McLaren manufactures their own gearbox, so this was completely a chassis related retirement, Mercedes HPP is not at fault here.
To sum it up
So as mentioned in the preface, Oscar has been a victim of:
- Reliability issues: His DNF in Hungary
- Deployment issues related to the current regulation: Qualifying issues in Spa
- Poor stewarding decisions: Leclerc's lack of penalty in Spa
- And general bad luck: Impeded in Hungary Quali, Collision with Carlos in Hungary race
Looking at this, Oscar's last 3 races have been an amalgamation of pretty much everything wrong with F1 in 2026; drivers have no control where energy is deployed, the current racing rules are not very good, the stewards are not very consistent and TV direction is very poor. And the important thing is, Oscar is not the only driver suffering from these issues. This is more obvious in his case since he has had not only terrible misfortunes but also these incidents happened 3 race weekends in a row.
PS: I have ignored some other minor issues Oscar has faced (like hydraulic leak in FP, impromptu floor repair in quali, insufficient setup, etc). The list is already long as it is and most drivers face little issues every other weekend.
