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Oscar Piastri is in danger of following in Mark Webber’s footsteps Former Red Bull race winner Mark Webber is the manager of McLaren driver Oscar Piastri The hard truth for Oscar Piastri? Lando Norris was simply the faster McLaren driver at the Hungarian Grand Prix, the final race before the F1 2026 summer break. With Norris elevated to the next level after his 2025 title triumph, Piastri finds himself at risk of being left behind. Much like his manager Mark Webber was left behind by Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull… Oscar Piastri has lost his way A version of this article originally appeared in PlanetF1.com’s conclusions from the 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google for news you can trust There was a time when many felt that Oscar Piastri had even greater potential than Lando Norris. A famous clip from Drive to Survive a couple of years ago shows Christian Horner being asked which of the two McLaren drivers he would sign for Red Bull if given the chance. A tough choice, you might think. But Horner did not hesitate: “Oscar Piastri.” For all sorts of reasons, that feels like a very long time ago now. The state of play at McLaren was always bound to go one of two ways in the aftermath of 2025. Either Lando was going to consider it job done after achieving his lifetime ambition, opening the door for Oscar to take the baton. Or Norris was going to find himself elevated to a whole new level of performance, leaving Piastri behind. Piastri remains an impressive talent, but has lost his way recently. Too often in 2026 you have been left to wonder how he managed to push Norris quite so hard for so much of last season. Now in their fourth season as teammates, just as he might have fancied finally overhauling Lando as team leader, Piastri looks more like Norris’s wingman than at any stage since he joined the team in 2023. It was said that no truly elite driver throws away the 34-point lead Piastri held over Norris after his most recent victory at Zandvoort almost 12 months ago. Unlike his teammate, there has been precious little personal development in the year since. Oscar Piastri vs Lando Norris: McLaren head-to-head stats for F1 2026 season F1 2026: Head-to-head qualifying records between teammates F1 2026: Head-to-head race statistics between teammates His struggles in low-grip conditions – the famous excuse for his disappearing acts in Austin and Mexico as the 2025 title race reached its climax – were once again exposed in Barcelona this season as he finished 35 seconds behind Norris. As noted after that race, where George Russell made similar complaints, any driver who admits he struggles in low grip is inadvertently letting slip that he is a limited and less versatile driver than his peers. The answer – the reason why Norris and Kimi Antonelli thrive in conditions where Piastri and Russell are almost defenceless – is almost always in how much energy each driver puts through the tyres. Meanwhile, in Hungary, Andrea Stella, the McLaren team principal, pointed to the relative lack of downforce of the 2026 cars as a factor behind Piastri’s patchy performances this season. Against the backdrop of the recent speculation about his place at McLaren, it was curious that in the heat of the moment Piastri turned his frustration on the team – “don’t talk to me now,” he told his race engineer Tom Stallard over team radio – as the race started to run away from him in Budapest. The thought occurred: might the decision by Mark Webber, Piastri’s manager, to take a step back from trackside duties in 2026 have been more significant than it first appeared? For all that they might protest otherwise, was that development symptomatic of a widening gap between McLaren and the Piastri camp? Of a team and driver slowly falling out of love with each other? The easy thing to do would be to point fingers at McLaren for pitting him into traffic (Piastri himself later clarified that the strategy on his side of the garage was “fine” as they worked to see off the threat of Lewis Hamilton). Of greater concern should be why he ultimately could not live with Norris’s pace in Hungary, almost certainly a function of Oscar’s technique loading up the rear of the car more heavily. That failure to shake Lando off, despite the advantage of clear air, is where the race was really lost. That – where am I falling short? What can I do to get better? – is where the minds of the great drivers, those committed to self-improvement and refining their technique, instinctively go. There was a touch of the Webbers in the unfortunate way Piastri’s race ended in Hungary. The collision with Carlos Sainz – who, on the evidence of a messy weekend from start to finish, is now allowing the deep frustration of Williams’ situation to seep into his driving – was followed by a gearbox problem. It always seemed to be Webber who got the rough end of the deal at Red Bull, too, as he also struggled to keep up with a teammate who entered a different stratosphere after sealing his first world championship. The final years of Webber’s career at Red Bull alongside Sebastian Vettel were spent as the nearly man. With great regret, it increasingly seems that is the limit of Piastri’s ambitions at McLaren too. Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? 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