Piastri Admits McLaren ‘Need to Improve’ After Bahrain GP P6

Oscar Piastri didn’t bother with the usual McLaren diplomacy after the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. Asked whether his team has slipped behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, he didn’t dodge it. He just said yes.

Sixth place at Sepang, the same spot he started from, was a tidy enough result given the chaos around him. But the number that matters isn’t the finishing position, it’s the admission that followed it. McLaren, by their own driver’s account, simply don’t have the pace to be fighting at the front any more. That’s not a journalist’s spin on a mixed result. That’s Piastri saying it himself.

A Result That Flatters the Performance

The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia was a lottery from the moment the rain arrived and delayed the start. Piastri and teammate Lando Norris were among the drivers who gambled on medium tyres for the restart, a call that looked sensible on the grid and ridiculous within half a lap once it became clear the track was nowhere near dry enough for slicks. Piastri pitted at the end of lap one to switch to intermediates, which sent him backwards through the field before he’d even got going.

From there it was a recovery drive: working forward again, a second stop under the first Safety Car for hards, and a nervy moment late on when Norris ran off track during another Safety Car phase and very nearly collected his own teammate in the process. Piastri escaped that one unscathed and eventually crossed the line in sixth, which on paper looks like a result that matches where he started. In reality it papers over an afternoon in which McLaren had precisely nothing for the cars ahead of them.

Piastri’s Diagnosis

Speaking afterwards, as reported by Formula1.com, Piastri was characteristically matter of fact about his own race, and considerably more pointed about the car underneath him.

“Overall, reasonably happy. I think it went pretty well on a personal note. I felt like I did a pretty good job today, which was good. Unfortunately we just weren’t quick enough to really do that much.” – Oscar Piastri

He added a note of mild frustration about what might have been, pointing to the closing laps when he’d been reeling in Charles Leclerc before the last Safety Car neutralised that chase.

“The last Safety Car was a bit of a shame, because I was catching Charles pretty quick. But no, apart from that, just a tricky afternoon. We didn’t quite make the right calls, and ultimately we weren’t quick enough, so that was the biggest thing.” – Oscar Piastri

That’s two separate problems in one sentence, strategic errors and a straightforward lack of raw pace, and Piastri didn’t pretend the second one was the smaller of the two.

Ranking the Also-Rans

The question that really mattered came next: does it feel like McLaren are now behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull on pure pace? Piastri didn’t hide behind the usual “every circuit is different” nonsense teams roll out when they’d rather not answer. He gave Red Bull their due, pointed out that his own team is roughly level with Ferrari, and then delivered the line that will sting far more than the P6 finish ever could.

“I think Red Bull clearly here have been incredibly fast, for sure. I think it’s been the strongest they’ve been. I think clearly whatever they put on the car in Baku’s been a big step forward for them, because last weekend without the bad Qualifying they had, they probably would have, well, I mean Max nearly won the race anyway, and this weekend Max did win the race, so they’ve been very, very strong the last couple of weekends.” – Oscar Piastri

Red Bull’s Baku upgrade set up Verstappen’s win, and Piastri’s own words confirm what the stopwatch has been suggesting for a couple of weekends now: Red Bull found something real, and McLaren haven’t got an answer for it. His verdict on his own team’s standing in the pecking order left nothing to the imagination.

“I think us and Ferrari seem a little bit in a similar ballpark, but that ballpark is not fighting for race wins, so we need to improve. We know that, and we’ll try our best to make sure we try and improve.” – Oscar Piastri

The Standings Tell the Same Story

Norris sits fifth in the championship on 188 points, level on points with Verstappen but miles adrift of the Mercedes pair dominating the standings, while Piastri himself is down in seventh on 128 points, some 192 points off the lead. In the constructors’ table McLaren are third on 316, a long way behind Mercedes on 556 and Ferrari on 405, and not exactly pulling clear of Red Bull breathing down their neck in fourth on 298.

Those numbers back up Piastri’s assessment rather than contradict it. McLaren aren’t collapsing, but they’re not progressing either, caught in that middle ground he described, present but not threatening. With Red Bull suddenly resurgent and Mercedes still the benchmark whenever they get their package working, McLaren’s margin for error has shrunk to almost nothing.

No Hiding Behind the Chaos

It would be easy to file Sepang under freak occurrence and move on. The grid had already been scrambled by a software glitch that stalled cars on the formation lap, a storm delayed the start, and half the field made the wrong tyre call in conditions nobody could read with any confidence. McLaren weren’t alone in getting it wrong; Hamilton dropped as low as eighteenth after his own slick tyre gamble, before clawing his way back to third. None of that chaos, though, explains why Piastri felt the need to say out loud that his team simply isn’t quick enough. That’s not a strategy problem. That’s a competitiveness problem, and it’s the one McLaren can’t blame on the weather.

Piastri’s words leave McLaren with nowhere to hide. He didn’t blame the rain, didn’t even blame the Safety Car timing beyond a passing mention, but he did acknowledge that strategic calls hadn’t gone their way. He pointed at the car and said it isn’t fast enough, in plain terms, in public. That’s the kind of admission team principals usually spend press conferences trying to avoid their drivers making.