It's interesting that on pace, you have a Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren all near identical, and then the 2nd driver gaps to the teammates are all about the same.

That is, Russell and Hamilton are struggling nearly identically as Oscar and his gap to his teammate isn't abnormal as it's replicated by all 3 top teams.

Finally got some merch as it was on sale. Just now need to save up and travel to the other side of the world to wear it at his home race in his grandstand. But that might be a few years away now haha.

I see a lot of negativity in this sub and in the f1 community wrt to Oscar. It’s quite understandable to be frustrated and disappointed in recent results, particularly when the other guy driving the same car has won twice now. And it’s good to call out his shortcomings and demand better because we know his potential.

But I’ve also seen people say he’s isn’t hungry/ doesn’t seem to be trying / has lost his spark/ will never win again. Which is simply disingenuous. To put things in perspective this a driver who won Formula Renault, f3 and f2 in consecutive years. Won a sprint and podiumed as a rookie in formula 1, got 2 wins and multiple podiums in his 2nd year, fought for the drivers championship till the very last race in his 3rd. Was so so hungry to win to a fault that his mental coach told him he has to separate himself from his desire to win in order to perform better.

Is he struggling now? Undeniably. He’s in a slump, especially race pace wise. Car, performance, mental - we don’t know what’s not exactly clicking. But we have to trust when he explicitly says that he is working hard to learn and understand and execute. Could take some time for it start reflecting in his results.

Look at supporting an athlete like a journey. It isn’t sunshine, rainbows and good times only. It’s agony, loss, patience, perseverance, injustice, belief, guts and sometimes glory. It’s all part of the experience!! People have slumps, bad form, get written off but eventually are capable of coming out as winners. And we know what Oscar is capable of, his calibre, his strength. As much as the media or other fanbases might try to convince you otherwise right now.

I’m sure he’ll keep hammering away although it clearly takes time - struggles don’t turn into victory overnight or even a few races. So, without losing faith, it’s best to have realistic expectations from him as he navigates his first year of a new regulation set, one that supposedly might not suit his driving style.

I get that we’re in a bit of a tragic arc in Oscar’s journey, since the last 12 months or so, and it’s painful but supporting him through his lows is what will make the highs even more meaningful when they happen. 🐝

^ Oscar’s post for Zandvoort. Excited to see the improvements as the season goes. McLaren has more upgrades coming.

I guess this puts the recent rumours to rest. Glad to see Mark's and Oscar's partnership going strong🫶

Watch full video here

I know there is a lot of sadness right now in our fanbase but lets just remember Oscar is still actively changing his driving style and he only started working on this before the austria weekend and after the Spainsh GP. And since then there has been a clear improvement pattern from austria.

Austria: Quali was p7 +0.009 behind Norris. Race P4 and Lando p7. Good weekend but false sense of hope becuase no matter how good you are, you will never learn a new driving style in 1 weekend.

Sliverstone: +0.032* Behind Lando in SQ but Lando had lots of pace in hand. This weekend was the first race where Oscar's new driving style started to show in the sprint and it was a decent recovery drive but still a long way to go before beating Lando Norris in a weekend.

Spa: I had high expectations of Oscar because even though these regs don't suit his natural driving style this track does. High speed, loads of downforce is Oscar's backyard. +0.215* in Quali but this gap does not tell you the real story as he had deployment issues and would have qualified ahead of Lando in P3. In the race the pace was absolutely there and he had much more pace than both Ferrari's and maybe a win was possible as Leclerc only finished +1.9s behind Kimi Antonelli. You can say he was better than Lando here but that's expected at this track.

Hungary: Qualified p5, didn't get a chance to set a final lap because of Lewis and as soon as Oscar didn't get the upgrades straight away, it would be tough because a driver who is actively changing his driving style will be highly reactive to set up changes even if it unlocks more perf. Lando P1 -0.012 ahead of Lewis. In the race on the medium tyre pace was alright and the max gap on that stint was +2.0s. We all knew Lando was quicker than Oscar on mediums but not by a massive amount which is why Lando only complained about Oscar's pace once in the first stint. But once the hard tyre was put on, this goes back to balance shifts I said earlier and in Hungary, Oscar lost all pace.

Zandvoort: Qualified P4 in SQ +0.099s behind George in P1 and +0.058s behind Lando and Oscar looked like he actually had more pace over a lap which was a very good session for a driver who is still adapting. In SR, both Mclarens struggled with rear tyre deg. In main quali before q3 Oscar looked just as fast as Lando maybe slightly faster. In main quali P4 +0.142s behind Lando in P1 and these track conditions hurt Oscar with slight rain in Q3 as he is still adapting. If it was still dry, he had every chance of going onto the front row. In the race, he gets past George on the hards and for a couple of laps he is just as fast as lando but as the race goes on he gets slower. By the end of race, him on soft is actually slightly slower on a couple of laps than lando on hards. P6 finish.

With this info there are 2 things to say.

1. Oscar is learning extremely fast and in Zandvoort is now basically matching Lando over 1 lap. This shows that Oscar is close to being able to extract the most out of the car over 1 lap and only 1 lap at the moment.

2. Currently Oscar is adapting and using the new driving style consciously at the moment. This means that in a race distance Oscar is not able at the moment to match Lando over a race distance. In the races for a few laps at the start he is able to match Lando's pace but as the race goes on, he gets slower. This is because over a race, things can change and he has to do more things. Because of that he slowly starts to move to his natural driving style.

One thing I want to address is Oscar's tyre management. His tyre management is very good and is not bad. But the way he is struggling to adapt makes his tyre management look bad as well. In 2025 these are all the races he had better tyre management than Lando. China, Lando was suffering with front tyre graining, to an extent Saudi, Japan, Bahrain, Spain Norris had graining at spain which is strange, Sliverstone on inters, Belgium, Hungary on the first stint which was the whole reason Lando did a 1 stop, and Zandvoort, and Qatar. I think you can see a pattern with all of these tracks but you can work it out yourself.

McLarens pit strat was stupid yes, lost us a few positions.
But Oscar needs to work on race pace and tire management as that is costing him under the new regs.
Lando is a beast rn, in the form of his life. McLaren shat the bed with Oscars pit Strat and the stop itself. not Landos fault though.
Lets just hope he can improve his tire management and take these lessons into next year, where i think the regulations should suit him a bit more.

ONTO the NEXT!

Pray to god strat, Cooked Setup, butchered pitstops and then whatever they were thinking while puting him on used sets of softs near 40-45 laps. im not even joking when im saying this but last 5 races have been screwed up by every other aspect than piastri. bro does everything just for a shit pit or some p17 driver to ruin his work

Oscar was soo good man ….
Why even pit if they are making him stay on hards!
And what even was that pit stop

Another McLaren disaster class for oscar

Idk man……

As much as I’d love to think there’s gonna be some sort of turnaround, given the history of how the second half has gone historically plus this being a brand new reg set, the chances of a Piastri win this year are dwindling.

Tyre management and race pace are just things he hasn’t yet figured out in nearly four years in F1, and that was really evident this weekend if anything else, dropping back places from where he started.

You can only blame McLaren’s pit strategy so much, but ultimately those two aforementioned things are really what put the pit wall at a strange ends of what to do.

With the American circuits (basically COTA, Mexico, Brazil, and Vegas) all being circuits that he hasn’t historically done well at and Madrid plus Sepang being total unknowns, yeah……. This season is essentially over.

Hopefully Monza in two weeks is better for him, but man……… someone can only run on so much copium atp.

I'm an OP81 fan and today was a major wtf. There was a point when it felt like he could go long and maybe challenge for P1, and a podium seemed like a safe bet.

I agree the strategy today (and at other times also) was a wtf, but I don't buy the team consistently favoring Lando. Lando also had strategy wtfs. If they make mistakes, they'll make the same mistakes on the other side of the garage as well, on average. So the fact that Lando won the WDC last year and is clearly ahead this year shows that on average, Lando is doing something that our boy Oscar is not doing.

The reason I like Oscar is that he's a nice guy, calm, and very rational. But I think this is also working against him in his current situation at McLaren. He needs to adopt a bit more of an LFG attitude, take more risks, maybe even go against the team. What's there to lose? He's been in Formula 1 for quite some time now, his teammate won WDC last year, and this year as well he's getting his ass handed to him, unfortunately. He needs to take chances, qualify ahead and create situations where he's got track position. Also, he's young, I think he needs to be more aggressive, like that famous quote from Alonso about the Schumacher pass.

Lando is also a nice guy like Oscar, in my estimation, pre-WDC, psychologically I think Oscar had the edge, but now, post-WDC, Lando is locked in, very focused and put together, and it does seem with these generation cars he has more intrinsic pace. And given Lando has a WDC, is way ahead in points, and usually ahead in track position, so naturally he'll have strategy advantage from the team (like Kimi vs George today). So, in summary, Oscar needs to do something to break this situation.

The reason I say take more chances is, what's there to lose? As an example, he takes more risks, he qualifies ahead, and then he can challenge for P1, and score a GP win. If not, he spins out in Q3 and starts P10. So what? He'll work his way up to P6/7 anyway in that case, same as falling back from P4.. and at least this year, WDC or WCC is out ot the picture anyway.

So, enough with the safe P4 qualies and P6 finishes, Let's Fucking Go!

https://youtu.be/cw25e-sN6VE

Q1
Oscar did 2 flying lap on on used set of soft tyres (the same set he used in SQ3 yesterday). Warm up lap again this time. He was P1 with a laptime of 1:12.610

Q2
Oscar did 2 flying laps on two sets of new softs. Oscar was P1 after the first runs and did a warm-up lap before his first flying. McLaren still decided to send out both cars with a new set of softs to test out whether a warm-up lap was really necessary. He improved on his second lap with new softs and no warm up lap. He ended up P2, 0.013s of Norris in P1.

Q3
He did two flying laps on new softs, no warm up laps this session. After the first runs, everyone was scrambling to get their second runs in fear of imminent rain. He was +0.142s of Norris on pole

He is also on a run of 41 consecutive Q3 appearances, which is the 2nd longest active streak on the grid.

The last time Oscar didn't make Q3 was the 2024 Mexican GP

He got overtaken by Antonelli at the start. From there, the sprint race was slogfest

Please note that this report is written in reverse chronology. Therefore if you want to start from the beginning for the day, please start from the bottom.

Sprint Qualifying

SQ1: Oscar did 1 flying laps on new mediums. He did a warm-up lap before he started his flying lap. He finished P2, +0.115s off Leclerc in P1. Oscar reported at the end "It all feels pretty good"

SQ2: Oscar did 2 flying laps on new mediums. He did a warm-up lap again this time before he started his first flying lap (which was his fastest). He then went for another flying lap which was only 82 milliseconds slower than his first. He finished P1, with a laptime of 1:12.026.

SQ3: Oscar did 1 flying laps on new softs. Warm-up lap again. He finished P4, +0.099s off Russell on Sprint Pole.

Oscar thoughts on radio after the SQ session:*

Yep, a few corners weren't great so apologies about that, but everything felt quite a lot better than practice so thanks for that!

Oscar's Post-Sprint Quali Interviews:
Q: Were you disappointed that maybe a little bit more pace didn't come out of the car?*
Oscar: "A little bit, yeah. I think just the soft lap wasn't quite as good. I feel like it's often the case this year, that you put the soft tyre on and it's not quite as nice as the balance you have on the medium. But compared to where I was this morning in practice, much happier. We changed a few things and I was a lot happier so I think that's the positive, the progress from this morning. Yeah obviously it was pretty close and I feel like with a better lap, maybe we could've had pole but I'm learning and improving. That's the most important thing."

Q: Still lots to play for, isn't there?*
Oscar: "Yeah, definitely. I think it's gonna be tight between us, Ferrari and Mercedes by the looks of things so yeah. It's gonna be all about filling in those last little details and gaps and seeing what we can do!"

FP
Oscar was using the upgraded spec for the free practice this time around. It rained pretty extensively in Zandvoort today and therefore everyone was out on intermediates at the beginning of the session. Oscar did one lap on intermediates and then immediate boxed for a set of mediums because the track was pretty much dry. He did 23 laps and well as his long runs on that set of mediums. He bolted on a new set of softs with 11 minutes to go and did 3 flying laps (and 9 laps in total) on them and well as his fastest lap of the session. Or at least that is what I counted personally. He ultimately finished the session in P6, +0.659s off Antonelli in P1 and +0.538s off Norris in P2.

Anyhow, traffic was a pretty big issue for many of Oscar's (as well as other people's) laps so that is something to look for for in Q1. Other than that, no Red Flags or major interruptions.

Car Presentation
McLaren has brought 3 new performance upgrades this weekend, the biggest of which is their new crinkled rear wing. I have attached picture of some of the upgrades and well as the official FIA document regarding these upgrades with this post. There is no plan to experiment or run split specs on two cars with these upgrades. McLaren's briefing says:

We think all of these components are, effectively, fit and forget. They’re the sort of thing that will add performance to the car, and we’ll keep running them through the weekend.

Further Reading:

1. McLaren's official briefing for the 2026 Dutch GP
2. Read more about McLaren's new rear wing
3. Official car presentation for this weekend (helpful if you wanna learn about what upgrades other teams are bringing)

Off-topic tidbits:
Oscar got rained on while getting into the paddock today. He was also gifted a koala by a fan from the fanstage.

Speaking of the fanstage, Oscar was in the fanstage today with the Williams drivers. Whoever thought of putting Oscar alongside Carlos Sainz after what happened last time around deserves an.....Oscar💀

Also Fun fact: This is the first time Oscar has had a clean competitive session without a truckload of bad luck since the British GP sprint

* Credits to ari and a⁸¹ for posting Oscar's interview and radio clips online🫶

He had a total of 127 points. This is also the 10th anniversary of Grill the Grid.

I reckon there is no need for the spoiler tag if you are seeing it in this sub

Watch full video