Everyone Missed What McLaren Did for Oscar Piastri

Despite losing the lead of the title, Oscar Piastri found a new gear as Lando Norris dominated.

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A single front suspension choice after Canada set Lando Norris up for qualifying dominance while Oscar Piastri arguably drifted out of the sweet spot. With Andrea Stella’s support, Piastri’s Mexico race was saved from abject disaster. What happened? Let’s talk about it!

There’s bigger context too. Stella’s public framing of his drivers suggests different superpowers that could shape the team’s development path into 2026.

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Oscar Piastri Finds His McLaren Mojo Again

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Huh, interesting development here, folks. Seems like one of my wild theories just got a bit of a boost and on time, too. That McLaren’s figureheads do have their own personal favorites, but they are professional enough to keep it under wraps mostly. And if you’re a Pastry fan, fan of my boy, you’re going to want to watch this. If you’re wondering what I’m trying to get at, it ties into the paddock puzzle as to why Pastri’s form has dipped after his Dutch Grand Prix win. while Norris and Vstappen have handily outscored him since then. In fact, if you look back to Canada, thanks to this brilliant new website F1 teammatequally.com, hey, I’m not sponsored by it, by the way. It was just a site I thought was really cool and I wish to plug over one lap, something which is very important this year in the year of our Bernie Collins 2025, Norris maximized the front suspension tweak afforded at Montreal, which only he opted to run, whereas Pastry snubbed. After that, the Australians failed to best Norris in qualifying by more than 600s in the second half of the year, whilst the latter has been capable of the dominance that we saw from the Australian at the start of the year. It seemed like the script had been completely flipped. Maybe it changing the feedback loop of the car in relation to grip rather than simple turning in as in if you can maximize grip that car’s going to be good. It’s not all about just being a smooth operator anymore. Well, I mean, that’s at least my take on the matter. So, it may mean that Pastri’s choice just to remain with what he was more familiar with could easily have been the turning point as to why we are where we are in the championship. Perhaps him playing a little bit too safe instead of just diving in head first and trying to adapt on the fly. I mean, fair enough. Come on. This is only his third season. He’s barely gotten past 50 Grand Prix under his belt. Whereas Lando is now proceeding to 150 and he’s fighting for a world title. You probably don’t want to be making rash decisions in your mind, but maybe the decision not to take that particular part could have eventually become a rash decision over a longer period. In any case, Oscar is not jelling well with the car as well as he had been for the first 10 or so races of the year. Or is he? There is also a little bit of a psychological factor here because I think you can probably tell whenever the McLaren or at least Norris’s McLaren has hit a purple patch, he comes on song and he feels really in his groove. You can see it right now. Now the momentum has very much been on the Brit side and you’re really starting to see the cheeky playful side of him again, especially on his socials. That’s Lando’s comfort zone. Whereas Pastri has been able to look adversity in the eye and at least come up with a plan. I look no further than Melbourne, which was looking like his championship campaign was over before it even began when he went off onto the grass. Did he give up and roll over and die? No, he didn’t. He got out. He managed to save at least a couple of points. And we got that spectacular overtake over Hamilton around the infamous backf chicane. And that might be a really key separator here as to why these two drivers are different. One really triumphs when everything is blowing in the same direction and the other may thrive when they feel a little bit cornered. And according to team principal Andrea Stellar, his insights has come to Pestre’s rescue just in the nick of time. last year seeing a collapse in Oscar’s form over the final flyaway rounds which we all were thinking after Austin and Mexico was going to repeat itself again. Thurma believes that he’s found something within Oscar Pastry’s driving instead of there being solely a fundamental problem with his car alone. Something of which was really evident around Austin and was able to be put into practice in time for Mexico after he had a really bad time of it in qualifying. So here are Stella’s words for your consideration. It’s quite long but I think it’s very important for the purposes of this video. him. After qualifying, we reviewed with Oscar extensively from a data comment video point of view. I think we extracted some important information in terms of how the car is going to be driven in these special lowgrip conditions that we are facing here in Mexico. To some extent, like we said, similar to Austin, it looks like in this regime, this regulation cycle, you have to drive the car in a way that adapts to the fact that the car slides a lot and can slide and produce lap time. That is not necessarily the way in which Oscar feels naturally that he is producing lap time. So we identified a few things that we could do with the car and a few things that he could do with the driving. We could see in the race that he was applying this. He definitely had a more competitive pace than yesterday, that being qualifying Q3. And it’s a bit of a shame that he was not in the condition to fully use this pace because we could not find a way to just get him out of traffic. He spent the entire race looking at the gearbox of the car ahead. Yes, I know that was a bit of a mouthful, but you know me, I like to yap about things. And I think there are quite a few truths in what Stella is talking about. And this should give you some sense of hope that this might play into Pestre’s favor, especially with four rounds to go and Brazil proving to be a rather curious track for him. As I touched upon in my predictions video yesterday, because there wasn’t really much to go upon in terms of data of Pestri at Interos, 2023 was a bit of a non-starter thanks to a freak accident with his rear wing, which led him a lap down. Whereas, I think that that sprint last year showed that Pastri had the potential to do really well around the circuit, but team orders got in the way to flip the results. But remember, it is very important to note that Lander of his own valition against team orders returned the favor once it became very clear that the championship effort last year was pretty much dead in the water. Brazil proving to be a very major turning point. Whereas on the Saturday of the sprint, it looked likely that Norris was maybe in a position, especially with the stappen ultimately qualifying 17th of the race, that he could easily have it all to play for again. Whereas by Sunday evening, it wasn’t. Not even close. And I still remember to this day, and I’m sure that Lando remembers this too, him hearing on the radio constantly, of a sappin going from 17th to 10th to 8th to 6th, him chasing Lando, then Lando going off at one of the restarts, and you just said, “Oh my god, I feel for Lando in that moment. That must have been horrible.” But it does really make me think about what could happen with the McLarens and Pestri in the final few races if he has gotten the handle on lower grip tracks, especially around Las Vegas. Zack Brown saying that he believes the MCL39 and his team will be less susceptible to the trials and tribulations of that particular circuit. But back to Stella’s comments, he’s saying that McLaren and Oscar regrouped after Mexico qualifying, agreeing on setup tweaks and a new approach for low grip conditions. This looking like a very important diagnosis for a very specific weakness thanks to a sane weak remedy between Austin and Mexico. The punchline being is that Oscar was able to apply this during the Mexico City Grand Prix and his pace did improve. But a shot at going after Vstappen was thwarted thanks to being stuck behind Bareman and the two Mercedes and basically dirty air ruining it all. And I don’t think this is some kind of fluff piece or Stella just going, “Oh, they’re there, Oscar. It’s fine. Don’t you worry.” No, I do feel like this is something that has some technical merit behind it. and say what you will about what’s going on with McLaren papaya rules what happens on the pit wall from the mechanical point of view McLaren has prided itself for many decades in providing par with their cars Ron Dennis stood by that to the hilt even if he did show favoritism with the drivers themselves I mean just look at what happened between Mika Hacken and David Koulthard there was no hiding it heck even DC was able to see it and he was able to take it on the chin and for him that is saying something but what is the weakness specifically well It’s down to the fact that Stellar has said that with these types of cars, you have to accept that sliding isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In the past, it could easily lose you lap time, whereas instead you can actually maybe gain lap time in certain places instead of just reverting to smooth and steady. I know the old phrase of smooth and steady wins the race, but in this particular context with these particular cars, it may be something that is winding up to be Pastri’s undoing, that he’s just simply too cautious and careful with the wheel. And no, I’m not talking about the kind of sliding we saw from Oscar and Charles around Baku last year. This is something that Andrea thinks comes more naturally for Lando and less so for Oscar. If you’re too smooth in your input, sometimes you can bleed tense at many corners when grip is really low. It’s similar to what Jensen Button experienced in 2009 once Brawn’s advantage disappeared as others caught up. His smooth style arguably became a bit of a bottleneck that Battle and Barrael exploited. Early season work saving him. And Autoport lays this out clearly and reports Stella’s view that the car is fine and the gap is about technique in those conditions. And that is something that Oscar has called out for especially par with the cars. As long as the two cars are fundamentally accurate and they are afforded the same upgrades and they can choose whether or not to actually use them, then the Australian is happy. That’s fair dinkham. And with this extra help that was afforded to him, Oscar was able to change the way he went racing in a little under 24 hours. And sure, it wasn’t the result that many Pastri fans hoped, he still lost the championship lead. But when you stop to think about it, had he done nothing, accepted his fate, and went as low as P1, he could have wound up being double figures behind Lando Norris instead of just being one figure. And this adding tools to Oscar’s already gaining toolbox, as Stella put it, that he is simply affording Oscar more options when it comes to racing. That when the chips are down and you have to get a bit more slidy slidy, just roll with it. go with it instead of resisting it and maybe leaving some tenths of a second on the table, which Norris is more than happy to trump down on. And the Italian going on to praise Oscar for being able to actually go with this, accept it, and then prove it on the race day. And when the title fight gets tight, the rate of learning could matter as much as raw speed. And it also circles back to Norris’s own quote, stating that these days the only thing he truly has over his teammate is his relative wealth and experience, which is perfectly valid. It’s a mathematical truth. And in time, Pastri will be gaining his own wealth of experience. And the gap between he and Lando in that regard will begin to dissipate. That Norris may have reached the top of his ceiling, whereas Pastri has not quite reached that yet. And I will explain later in the video that with him unlocking this potential quirk thanks to Stella, this might have unleashed a different Pastri. Is this good for his championship hopes? Well, of course it does. It may mean that he no longer is just trying to tread water in these final few flyaway races. that maybe he has an answer as to why he fell off last year. Like how he had an answer in 2024 to as to why in 2023 he was so poor in comparison to Norris regarding tire management. He fixed that and now he might be able to fix this by maybe being a little bit more aggressive with the steering wheel if he has to instead of just being resistant. Because what we got from it was not Oscar Pastri being stuck in traffic and then shrugging his shoulders and having to deal with it. We saw some good damage limitation and we saw some good entertainment. A one-point difference. That’s doable. That’s flippable. And it does mean that Lando very much has to think of his championship lead. Now he is the one being hunted down. But I can easily imagine that if you’re an Oscar fan, what happened around the Italian Grand Prix is stinging that little bit more. Those three points made all the difference as to who’s leading the championship. And as for future races, Stella believes that there is no bakedin advantage for either driver. That it’s basically all to play for. that that there is no real guarantee that one driver is definitely going to dominate. Although I do certainly believe that Oscar has a really good handy time of it around Qatar, whereas I believe that Abu Dhabi could be Norrises to have Vegas in Brazil. The jury’s out on that one. And with Stella believing that the team has become better at extracting the car’s performance consistently. Very handy considering that they’ve not been upgrading that car for a while now. And Red Bull has been doing everything but hurling the kitchen sink in their direction with the RB21. that maybe sets a fair arena where adaptability can pay off quickly if Oscar’s messco lesson generalizes. It gives Oscar the opportunity to be able to push back against Lando’s momentum once again. And especially being able to correct from the mistake of Oscar’s dand maneuver around the Austin sprint, which then meant that Lando’s repercussions would have been really a handy shot in the arm for Pastre was completely wiped out. But maybe that adversity was for the best because it might have actually changed something within Past’s driving style. That hey, he actually unlocks something. Cool. That’s wrong with it. So, you know, this might actually then lead to the old saying of everything happens for a reason. Lando finds something one race, Oscar then finds something in another. And yes, I can understand why you might be arguing that, oh, these are quite small potatoes and in comparison, Max Fappen has been finding giant whopping spuds. And uh you just got to have to look at what Max has been able to do and just think, “Wow, man, that’s totally tubular.” You get it? His potatoes, they can easily be called tubers because of their shape and the way they source nutrients. And yeah, okay, that’s a little bit of plant humor. Okay, L, come on. We know that Pastry is your boy, and it sounds like you’re sucking up the dregs in that cup of cocam of yours. Yeah, I can probably understand why you’re thinking that. And I can also get why you might suppose the idea that this is all part of the damage control McLaren has been undertaking to showcase more of Pastri in recent times on their socials. Despite McLaren claiming to shut out the external noise regarding its wheelings and dealings. Well, I don’t think the social media department has been able to shut out the external noise. I think the management though are going la. We’re doing things our way. Yeah. Because needless to say, there’s been a whole lot more Oscar content than I’ve remembered in previous times. They’re very much going Oscar buddy. But what will make me really convinced that McLaren believe in Pastri is if he’s added to Sonic Crossworlders DLC because he’s had some footage with Sonic. Come on, we need to see that. Right, I want to bring this back to the theory I’ve had for a while that Stella made with regarding his Pastry Schumacer Alonzo line last year and that not being a case of celebrity named dropping. Andrea, he’s perfectly qualified to suppose that because he’s worked closely with both of those legends at the Scooteria and read closely with Norris and Pastri because Stella has made comments about Lando being compared to those two legends. He Stella values three key things. First, the ability to be able to judge oneselves when being handed data, essentially being able to take constructive criticism. Well, B, an ability to be able to show continuous improvement instead of just simply stalling out and then just accepting your fate. And I I I the ability to improve and maintain team culture, as in don’t just rock the boat or think that your ego is bigger than the team, which explains why Stella did well at Ferrari because no driver is bigger than Ferrari. And I think you can safely argue that off the track, Pastri has actually been towing the line with McLaren more than Norris has. As in, Pastri has created less headaches in the media pen than Norris has been able to do. Because you got to remember to that whole repercussions line afterwards, people were just going, “What did you just say?” Whereas with Oscar, I can see this in the metrics. After he said that everything was a clean slate, that generated far less electricity in their headlines and far less views. I’m not ashamed to admit that. That being a statistical truth, even if the ontrack stuff that Oscar said over the radio is a little bit more open to interpretation, you know, heat of the moment stuff. But in the original comment, Stella linked Oscar to shoemacker in terms of the person behind the driver, the capacity to build unity in the garage. The natural speed is there, but the center of gravity in that praise is method and mindset. And a quality of shoeacker which is not quite talked about as much of course as his skill is the ability to translate technical feedback into emotional motivation. As in he can muck in with the people within the garage and then translate all of the stuff he’s been able to say into actual results and absolute jubilation. Or hey at least team harmony and just trying to keep things simple. Stella saw that for himself with his own two eyes. And if he’s able to see that with his own two eyes regarding Pastri, then who’s to say that in the fullness of time, we might see Pastri emulating his own shoe moment, if it hasn’t already happened already, what with what happened in Jedha or at Baku last year with Llair. And the last time a team principal over at Ferrari was able to do that and be able to work with a person like Schumaca, they went on a run of domination and fullon performance that lasted non a decade. Now, put that beside how Stella talked about Norris after 2023 being his breakout year, garnering the most podiums in a year for him at the time. Stella saying that Lando’s natural speed can compete with Schumaca and Alonso. Then framing the next step is making racecraft and adaptability bigger because you rarely get a perfect car. This is sort of similar to what Stella said about Pastry, but the emphasis is that little bit different. There is a little bit of nuance here, folks. With Norris, the comparison to those two legends is about raw pace and sensory skills. Whereas with Oscar, it’s all about analytical discipline, as in looking at the data, just going, “Uh, yeah, okay.” And then just going out and doing it. As well, of course, the growth curve, because the growth curve in these 50, 60 races we’ve seen from Pestri has been nothing short of remarkable. As well as the fact that, well, Oscar seems to click well with the McLaren culture. Meaning what exactly? Well, it means that Stellar is not afraid to use the shoeer Alonzo badge on both drivers, but for very different reasons. And considering the capacity of Stella’s job being a technical one, the team principal and all, maybe it could be, and this is a spanner of speculation here coming out, maybe increasing the aperture, is that the qualities he sees in Pastries are something he maybe values more. because you all looked at all of the subtle things that we’ve seen from McLaren in terms of the optics that Stella seems to rate Pastry more whereas Brown rates Zach more given their connections in the past be it business or racing or motorsport wise or management. Yeah, this is just swings and roundabouts. I believe those two have their own favorites but they’re able to keep a lid on it in terms of overt statements that they can see good qualities in each other’s drivers. Stella’s validating that Lando’s ceiling is quite high and then challenged him back then to widen his tool set. timely given what he’s been through since with Vstappen and Pastry and all. And for Pastri, he’s validating Oscar’s process and then implies that this process is why his ceiling will be met instead of him having met it already and then will mean that he falls short for the rest of his career. And I think the fact that this year off track Pastri has been a little bit more successful in not stirring the pot as much in terms of the media as in he’s not really given them much to chew over other than the results themselves. Whereas Norris has been quite quick to either look dejected or sad or a little bit too perky or a little bit too abrasive with his comments or just saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. I think many people remember when Lewis Hamilton was trying to congratulate Norris then Norris came out with a barb. Lewis was like, “Well, man, I was just trying to compliment you.” You just feel like Lando, why did you have to say that? Like, why did you have to say that after Austin wishing that the circuit was easier and then Lstappen just look at you like, what? It’s a very discreet notion, but it’s not one that Stellar has shied away from. And it’s something that he actually repeated this year after Baku regarding Pastri’s horrible race. Arguably, no, definitely his worst weekend in his Formula 1 career. and ironically it being the site where he had one of his best weekends of his career as well the year before. Stellar arguing that even the best can have error stream races and that the point is how fast you can learn from it. That it’s the same learning rate lens he used in Oscar’s rookie year now applied under real pressure what would the title fight. What I’m trying to get at here is that Stella still believes that the difference between Oscar and Lando is that Oscar is able to improve quite quickly instead of just having sporadic moments of brilliance because we have seen moments from Lando as well where he can be truly on it and then completely fall apart. And if you’re wishing to hunt for who’s actually Stella’s technical favorite, just keep an eye on how he debriefs to the media going forward. as to which driver he talks about more regarding setup and how they go racing and whatnot. It’s going to be very very small, but it will be there. They are very good at keeping it under wraps, but it will end up leaking to the world, I think. And overall, I think this is a really good turn of events for Pestre’s campaign that maybe we won’t see the dip that he had last year. It’s not nearly as disastrous. Yeah, of course, Austin and Mexico were not happy hunting grounds for Pastre, but at least he didn’t crash out in Q1 like he did in both those occasions. He made it to the final rounds. He actually was able to finish in the top five on both occasions. It’s not as bad. It’s just the problem for Oscar is that Lando has been that good. And that is really handy, too, because the old adage of you’re only as good as your last race is really ringing true around here. Much like with Lando earlier in the year, many people are looking to Oscar Pastrian thinking, wow, maybe he’s not that good after all. Maybe he is actually sort of a bit of a fraud in disguise. You know, Lando might be the hot favorite after all. And this culminating in Jack Vner’s take regarding that. Oh, you know what? Oh, Oscar was only good because Lando wasn’t that good at the beginning of the year, so he didn’t really have a representative benchmark. I usually rate Jack’s takes because they are quite spicy and thought-provoking, but I will admit that was a bitter pill to swallow, but I sort of get it. Lando was not feeling it at the start of the year, clicking as he actually called it. But now that he is, perhaps Oscar was a little bit too horizontal during his domination period between Jeder and Canada. And now that the chips are down, Pastri hasn’t been able to kick on as much as people hoped. Some even thinking that he’s been too complacent. But what I think Mexico did show and Stella has been able to tell the world is that Oscar can bring something to the table when the chips are down. Because after qualifying, when I saw that, even though I was on a boat, I wanted to toss myself off that boat because I was like, “Oh no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then turn one, I was like, “Oh, no.” I really rate what Lando’s been able to say, and I don’t think Stellar is dunking on Lando whatsoever. He rates both drivers. McLaren are really proud to have these kinds of drivers. And I really think they are part of the elite, both of them. But I think the way they’ve both been treated and managed by McLaren is nothing short of corporate manipulation. I feel like it’s been too artificial, too heavy-handed. We’ve not really seen the true nature of both drivers except for sporadic moments. We think, “Oh, is that there?” Like, it’s been a while since we’ve seen Lando’s cheeky side. We’re now starting to see it again. And that’s something that people have been wondering about. With Oscar, the calm nature that we came to expect, many people calling the Ice Boy, even though I think he’s more of a Mika Hackinan faximile than a Kimmy Reichenon one. I’m just feeling like we’re getting their characters and personalities lost at key moments. And I think because of what happened around Mexico City, Stella’s theories regarding Schumapper and Alonzo, at least in Pastri’s capacity, still hold water. It meant that maybe Oscar hasn’t reached a ceiling yet after all. That he is not rigid in terms of his style, and he can adapt. That you can say to him, “Hey, mate, how about you drive like this this time?” And Oscar can just go, “Yeah, all right.” What I’m trying to get at is that last time out, Oscar has proven that he can actually learn and that we have to be reminded as to how inexperienced he is in comparison to Lando. Lando, oh, he’s very much on it. And I also have to remind you, I predicted he would win this championship. You can go back to that video for the receipt. I can honestly assure you. But what Pastry has proven is that he has eclipsed my prediction that he would have been fifth in the championship. Just already he can be proud of what he’s been able to do this year. But now I feel like maybe the final few races might not nearly be as dire as it was last time out. I quite frankly just don’t want him to spin out around Abu Dhabi because I can imagine that many um papaya trousers turned brown after that because Ferrari held everything at them at that race with a double podium. Lando had to pick up the pieces in that regard. But who picks up the pieces now between Pastri Norris and Versappen is a little bit open-ended. And quite frankly, as a Formula 1 fan, I am giddy. And this was proof positive that we saw a driver in Oscar that he could solve things at the track and not just attack them blindly thinking that oh well it worked last time I can do that again and not listening to criticism. He listened and he improved. That is how championships can be won and I have proved positive that you will like this video over here and I will be able to provide you said proof if you click on it. I’ll see you over there.