AUGUST 25, 2026

Norris gathers momentum as Piastri searches for answers

The two McLaren drivers left Zandvoort with sharply different results after Oscar Piastri's pace disappeared during the second half of the race.

McLaren left Zandvoort with a pole position, a victory and a sizeable list of questions. The awkward detail is that the questions were concentrated on Oscar Piastri's side of the garage.

Lando Norris followed his Hungarian success with a second consecutive win, but the race was not as straightforward as the final margin suggested. He struggled on the soft tyres and lost out to Kimi Antonelli at the second start. The balance changed dramatically on the hard compound, when Norris said the car came alive.

He closed on the Mercedes and made the decisive move around the outside of Turn 1 while Antonelli was negotiating traffic. Norris eventually won by more than 11 seconds, although he continued to stress that McLaren still has weaknesses in slow corners.

Piastri's afternoon followed the reverse trajectory. His opening stint was respectable and he gained places after the restart, but a slow pit stop dropped him behind the Mercedes cars. From the second stint onward, he struggled for grip and was passed by both Ferraris on his way to sixth.

The Australian's diagnosis was admirably concise: the pace was simply not there. McLaren must now establish whether the drop came from set-up, tyre behaviour, damage or some interaction between them.

This matters beyond a single disappointing result. Norris is beginning to turn McLaren's recent upgrades into victories, while Piastri has been left searching for an explanation at precisely the moment the team is becoming a regular threat to Mercedes.

There is no evidence of a fundamental crisis. Piastri had been competitive earlier in the weekend, and Formula 1 cars can move from agreeable to impossible with changes that would appear trivial to anyone outside an engineering office.

But momentum is a real currency in a championship. Norris currently has it. Piastri's priority before Monza is to understand where his went.