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Oscar Piastri admitted McLaren left the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix with more questions than answers after a weekend that began with encouraging pace but ended in a clear performance shortfall.
The Woking-based team had looked sharp during free practice at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, strong enough to raise early expectations that it might be able to challenge for victory. By Sunday evening, however, that optimism had been replaced by a more uncomfortable reality: McLaren had scored useful points, but it had not been able to convert its early speed into a sustained race threat.
Qualifying offered the first sign that the weekend was slipping away from the level McLaren had hinted at in practice. Lando Norris could get no closer than three tenths from pole position, while Piastri was another tenth further back.
The race then underlined the scale of the deficit. Norris still delivered another podium for McLaren with third place, but he finished more than 20 seconds behind race winner Lewis Hamilton. Piastri, meanwhile, came home fifth, almost a full minute away from Hamilton at the flag.
That gap was particularly striking given the expectation generated earlier in the weekend. For wider context on the race-winning benchmark McLaren was chasing, read our analysis of how Lewis Hamilton secured his famous first Ferrari victory in Barcelona.
Asked after the race whether he understood where McLaren’s performance had disappeared, Piastri was blunt. The Australian said there was no clear explanation yet for why the car became so difficult to manage.
“No, not really. I was trying a lot of different things and running into a lot of different problems, so I think just struggling a lot with grip, tyre life, obviously,” Piastri told media, including Motorsport Week.
“So I don’t have any answers at the moment. I’m sure there will be some answers later, but yeah, it was a surprise to struggle so much.”
Piastri said there were moments when the MCL40 briefly felt more competitive, only for the situation to deteriorate again. That inconsistency left him relying on the post-race analysis to explain why McLaren’s race pace proved so fragile.
“All I can hope is that we learn why it was so difficult from that,” he said.
Piastri acknowledged that fifth place still brought a reasonable points return, but made clear the underlying performance was not where he expected it to be.
“Obviously, the points we gained today were still reasonable, but obviously, I want the performance to be a lot stronger than it was.”
McLaren’s Miami resurgence is now beginning to look less conclusive than it once did. The team will hope for another response in Austria next week, although the prospect of repeating last year’s dominant one-two, led by Piastri, now feels far more distant.
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.
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