McLaren given Daniel Ricciardo 'black mark' as Project Piastri falters

McLaren have been strongly criticised for their decision to replace Daniel Ricciardo with fellow Australian F1 star Oscar Piastri.

Piastri joined the papaya team for 2023 after they won that high-profile tug-of-war with Alpine for his services, replacing Ricciardo as the former Red Bull man was released with a year still left on his contract.

Initially it appeared to be a genius move by Zak Brown and the team in papaya, and by the summer of 2025 Piastri was leading the world championship and looking like a future superstar.

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2026 vs 2025, Piastri's fortunes are heading south

But since then things have started to fall apart, with Oscar losing out to team-mate Lando Norris for the title amid the controversy of those so-called 'papaya rules'.

Piastri's slump has continued into 2026 and he currently sits in seventh position in the drivers' standings - some 55 points behind Norris.

Now, 12 months on from those heady days of 2025, things appear to be much more uncertain for Piastri. He was even linked with a McLaren exit to Red Bull over the summer had Max Verstappen decided to make the move to Woking.

Windsor always believed McLaren move was wrong

Former F1 team boss and now leading insider Peter Windsor says he has always believed Piastri moving to McLaren - and not Alpine - was a bad move. And now he is very loudly telling F1 fans that he was right all along.

Speaking to Cameron Cc:, he claimed: “They would have been much better off keeping Daniel Ricciardo in that other car. I’ve always said that, and what we’re seeing now is all the downsides that I predicted about Oscar going to McLaren.

“And I still say it. He would have been much better off staying at Alpine, blowing [Esteban] Ocon away and then finding himself as still the hot property of Formula 1, going potentially to Ferrari or Mercedes given all the changes that took place.

“And now, how many people think of Oscar as the bright new star of F1? I’m sorry, he’s been overtaken by a few others now.”

“Part of it is his fault I suppose, it was the fault of him going to McLaren in my opinion, that was the real bottom-line mistake. I still think he’d be a better driver had he not gone to McLaren."

Piastri was the next big thing in F1, not any more

Windsor says Piastri was THE hottest property in F1 when McLaren and Alpine were publicly squabbling over his signature, but not any more.

“When you think of where Oscar was in his career at that point, everybody wanted him. He was the next big star of F1.

“Now, in his mind, he’s not allowed now to take the race to Lando Norris. I’m sure that’s not how McLaren would see it or even define it. But that’s how it would seem to him."

Windsor has high praise for just about everything McLaren have done this season as they surge back into title contention with Norris claiming back-to-back wins in Hungary and the Netherlands. But not for their handling of Project Piastri.

“It's a black mark on McLaren’s ability. How they’ve handled the two-driver situation having got Oscar and got rid of Daniel, has not been good.”

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