Oscar Piastri reveals brutal admission over F1 title failure

McLaren F1 star Oscar Piastri has opened up about his championship loss to team-mate and 2025 title rival, Lando Norris, admitting it felt like 'he didn't do a good enough job'.

The F1 2026 campaign is coming to the end of a five-week enforced break, brought about by the double cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix, both of which were scheduled to take place in April.

However, as conflict continued to rage on in the Middle East in the weeks leading up to the fourth and fifth rounds of this year's championship, F1 opted to cancel both events, with no replacement races scheduled.

But this weekend will see the sport return to our screens for the Miami Grand Prix, where McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has promised that the reigning constructors' champions will be bringing "a completely new car" to the sprint weekend.

This is something Piastri will certainly be looking to take advantage of having won the race in Miami last season, but he will have to defend the so far imperious Silver Arrows and of course his team-mate and reigning champion, Norris.

F1 HEADLINES: Hamilton's new career as 'hot drivers' promo slammed

Piastri 'didn't do a good enough job' to beat Norris

At last year's Miami GP, Piastri stormed to victory, extending his lead at the top of the 2025 F1 drivers' standings following his fourth victory of the campaign.

At this point in the season last year, the Aussie driver was the one to watch, frequently beating Norris and McLaren's other rivals.

But the now 25-year-old's season took a turn when he began to slip down the order, just as Norris and four-time champion Max Verstappen seemed to be fighting back, something which Piastri has now alluded to in a new interview ahead of this weekend's Miami GP.

In a conversation for the High Performance podcast with host Jake Humphrey, Piastri looked back on his 2025 campaign, comparing the highs of winning races and leading the championship to the lows of finishing second to team-mate and title rival Lando Norris.

Reflecting on his successes from last season, Piastri said: "It's a double-edged sword, right? I would say there's obviously the confidence you get from that [winning] and just the enjoyment. You know, at the end of the day, we're all here on the grid because we're trying to win races and eventually championships so there's a lot of enjoyment that comes with that.

"I guess there's also kind of the expectation or the building expectation of trying to keep that going. At certain points last year, finishing second was almost kind of the worst place I could finish because I got beaten by my team-mate probably and our car was a lot better than everyone else's on certain weekends and I didn't do a good enough job basically.

"When finishing second feels like a bad weekend, it's tough and important to kind of look at it in a more holistic way and go, 'Okay, yeah, it wasn't a good weekend or whatever in the grand scheme of things, but I still just finished second in an F1 race thinking I probably didn't do as good of a job as I should have or I could have'.

"It's a double-edged sword and you've got to be careful to not get carried away either," he continued.

Piastri: 'It was within my power to win the world championship'

Humphrey then hinted at Piastri's confidence likely getting a boost from his positive start to the campaign last year, with the McLaren star admitting that even after his disappointing P9 finish in his home race in 2025, he felt as if the title could be his if he played his cards right.

"I knew within myself that it was within my power to win the world championship," Piastri said.

"I wasn't certain it was going to happen but I knew that if, and it's a big if, if you did a good enough job and if certain things go the right way, then it can happen."

Piastri eventually finished the drivers' championship in P3, separated from his victorious team-mate by Verstappen who enjoyed a late title surge at the wheel of his RB21.

As the conversation developed, Piastri pointed to moments like last year's race weekend in Miami where he now feels he didn't do enough to secure his best shot at his maiden title win.

Referring to his P4 starting position after a disappointing qualifying in Miami last season, Piastri continued: "Miami for me last year was a perfect example where I won the race, but I started fourth. I went into the race going, there's no way I'm going to win this thing starting from fourth. A few things went my way. Our car was incredibly quick in Miami and I knew that I'd done a good job of kind of the circumstances I got dealt with in the race and was able to win.

"I knew that I could do that once or twice or three times in the year out of 24 races and maybe get away with it, but I could not win a championship based on weekends like that... I didn't do a good enough job before that."

READ MORE: McLaren boss takes aim at Daniel Ricciardo's final act in F1

Written by

Kerry Violet - F1 News Editor

Having graduated from the University of Sheffield with a 2:1 in Journalism in 2022, Kerry continued her pursuit of finding a full-time position in motorsport through work with the F1 Arcade in London, where she got to meet true fans of the sport and make a live grand prix watch party memorable for them. It was here that she confirmed her dream of combining her background in journalism and love of motorsport, going on to volunteer with the female-led platform Empoword Journalism. Having completed stints as a screen editor and sports editor, Kerry landed her first F1-specific editorial role with GPFans and has thoroughly enjoyed continuing to work closely with the sport ever since. The access GPFans offers Kerry has allowed her to interview big names such as Naomi Schiff and David Coulthard and given her experiences she could only have dreamt of as a young F1 fan.

View full biography