Adrian Newey is the only man who can save popular F1 star’s career

Oscar Piastri

Adrian Newey is the only man who can save popular F1 star’s career

History has some pretty strong signs

Chris Deeley Editor

Experienced sports writer covering F1 and other motorsports since 2023

Tuesday 8 September 2026 21:45

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Kimi Antonelli. Lando Norris. Charles Leclerc. George Russell. Max Verstappen. Lewis Hamilton.

What do all of those names have in common? They've all won an F1 grand prix in the last year.

One name who hasn't earned his way onto that list? Oscar Piastri. Once the calendar turned over to September, the McLaren man had officially gone 12 full months without a Sunday win.

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In fact, all six of the names above have outscored the Australian since that last grand prix win, at Zandvoort last August. Five podiums in 22 race weekends since that dramatic race will not move the needle.

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Anatomy of a collapse

The confounding part is that the Zandvoort win looked like the tide turning in last year's championship fight, putting Piastri 34 points clear of his team-mate at the top of the standings and more than 100 ahead of Verstappen. The collapse has been alarming, and hard to find a direct reason for.

It's F1, so it's easy to point and go 'car bad'. Fine, but Norris has won four races in the last 12 months in the same machinery. There's also a working theory that Piastri struggles in low-grip environments, which the new generation of cars may be exacerbating, but he's struggling everywhere. And nearly half of this winless run came in the old car, which he'd just driven to seven wins in 14 starts.

Whatever the root cause of his struggles, it's hard for an F1 driver to be this bad for this long and keep his job.

A 102-point difference between he his team-mate since that Zandvoort win is the kind of thing that raises red flags for a team. One-lap pace is also a key signifier, and between sprint and grand prix qualifying, Norris is 22-8 up since that Zandvoort win.

The short version is that Piastri isn't long for McLaren. You don't get big dogged by your team-mate that severely and stay in your seat long-term - certainly not unless you're willing to accept being the team's number two driver, and everything that comes with that.

A secondary, related problem for the Australian is that it's very hard to convince a different big team to come in for you once they've seen this happen.

Would Mercedes bring him in to push Kimi Antonelli? Why, when he doesn't seem able to push Norris anymore?

Why would Ferrari take a chance on a driver who looks like a busted flush when they have promising, younger (and much cheaper) candidates coming through their driver academy system?

This has happened time and time again for big-team drivers who lose their internal wars. Valtteri Bottas shuffled out and down to Alfa Romeo. Daniel Ricciardo slid to Renault (and then further). Sergio Perez...well.

Piastri running out of appealing F1 options

That leaves Piastri with relatively few appealing options when McLaren do cut the cord. Cadillac should be radioactive for any drivers with a modicum of ambition, Haas are underfunded, while Alpine seem fundamentally incapable of being a serious team for any length of time.

Audi? No. Williams? James Vowles is very good at explaining how his team are going to take a big step forward and explaining the frameworks he's put in place, but he's even better at making excuses when they go backwards again.

Barring some sort of miracle in which he goes to one of those teams and is so undeniably great that a Big 4 team is forced to give him a second look - which doesn't happen, you're only ever at a mid-table team twice: once on the way up, and again on the way down - there's only one way that Piastri can realistically think about a second title challenge.

Piastri has only one realistic option

Fernando Alonso might finally hang it up after the 2027 season, which would also be a logical break point for Piastri and McLaren. The Australian therefore must fight tooth and nail to be the two-time champion's replacement at Adrian Newey's team.

Piastri must fight to join Newey at Aston Martin.

An established top-tier team probably won't touch him. He doesn't want to be Carlos Sainz 2.0, getting paid a king's ransom to get knocked out in Q1 every Saturday. His only hope is to latch on with a team on the way up - and Aston are the only team who could fit that description in the next couple of years.

Missing from the No. 2 driver examples listed above (Bottas, Ricciardo, Perez) there was one notable absence. Rubens Barrichello, Michael Schumacher's wingman at Ferrari, joined up with a legendary designer who needed an established driver who was willing to take a risk.

He won multiple races and helped Brawn GP to a constructors' championship.

The blueprint is there for Piastri. Whether he's able to follow it is now up to him.

Written by

Chris Deeley - Editor

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F1 McLaren Aston Martin Oscar Piastri Adrian Newey