We rate F1 2026 title contenders - Oscar Piastri

For long spells of the 2025 Formula 1 season, Oscar Piastri looked the man to beat while team-mate Lando Norris struggled with his car and Red Bull was all at sea.

A combination of an off-weekend in Azerbaijan and low-grip struggles in Austin and Mexico then opened the door for his rivals to swoop past, with the Australian now keen to perform at his scintillating best for the entire season.

Ronald Vording - Only consistency leaves room for improvement

Piastri has shown impressive progress over the past seasons, a trend that is highly likely to continue in 2026. The Australian experienced his first title fight last year, and that experience will undoubtedly benefit him in the seasons ahead.
 
As for the ratings, I have been slightly more critical across the board than most of my colleagues, which means my numbers are generally a bit lower. In terms of pure pace, I have ranked Piastri behind Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and (very marginally) Lando Norris – which results in a 91.
 
His racecraft sits at roughly the same level, partly because Piastri produced several impressive overtakes around the outside last year – including one that has largely flown under the radar, but still deserves to be mentioned: his pass on Lewis Hamilton in the closing stages of his Melbourne home race.
 
Based on the second half of 2025, only consistency leaves room for improvement. Yes, there was a lot going on behind the scenes at McLaren and the papaya rules did not always work in his favour, but with Baku and the low-grip conditions in Austin and Mexico, Piastri himself had a few more difficult weekends. Consistency can still improve, although given his development rate there is little doubt that he will make that step sooner or later.

Oscar Piastri won seven grands prix in 2025 on his way to third in the championship.

Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 / Getty Images

Jake Boxall-Legge - How will Piastri fare in lower-grip F1 cars?

If pre-season race simulations are anything to go by, McLaren and Red Bull should have their moments of being evenly matched across 2026. Piastri, after seeing the title slip through his fingers in the final third of last year, will have processed the more unpalatable lessons from 2025 – but the jury remains out on how he'll contend with the lower-grip cars.

While more able to deal with the apparent lack of cueing from the McLaren car last year, particularly in high-speed corners, Piastri will have to adapt to the flightier, looser '26 machines – something that Norris and Verstappen have historically been handy at dealing with. Will he be able to get on top of the new cars?

Stuart Codling - A change in entourage could help him

At his brilliant best, Oscar Piastri proceeds like a swan gliding across the water; beneath the surface those legs might be paddling furiously but, above, nothing disrupts the picture of disdainful hauteur. Still, over the disastrous course of a handful of races late last season he shipped over 100 points to Max Verstappen.

This disconcertingly peculiar slippage of form, mostly but not completely at tracks where circumstances had combined to deliver sub-optimal grip, left a few question marks where none had hovered before. Piastri has changed his entourage last year – probably for the best if fewer people are whispering darkly in his ear that the team is favouring his team-mate – so hopefully the combination of mind coach and pragmatic engineering support will enable him to expunge such errors.

Still, if he can't up his game in low-grip conditions, he's going to find the looser 2026 F1 cars a struggle.

Learn more about Oscar Piastri and his road to F1 through his career in pictures.

How our rating system works

To set the drivers apart, we have taken inspiration from the official F1 game to attribute scores in four different categories, out of a maximum of 100.

• Experience (EXP): An objective score simply based on the driver's experience level through total race starts
• Racecraft (RAC): The driver's ability to race wheel to wheel, either to defend a position or pull off a decisive overtake, without landing themselves in trouble with the stewards
• Consistency (CON): The driver's ability to keep clean, avoid unforced errors while being consistently quick in a race
• Pace (PAC): Reflects a driver's pace over one lap, largely in relation to their team-mate
• Overall Rating (OVR): The four above categories will be combined into an overall rating, weighted towards Pace.