Australian driver Oscar Piastri endured another difficult afternoon at the Circuit of the Americas during the 2026 Formula 1 season, battling Mercedes driver George Russell on the opening lap before keeping him behind in the closing stages to secure a hard-fought seventh place finish.
The pair made slight contact at Turn 1 on the opening lap, while Russell later ran beyond the track limits at Turn 12 and rejoined directly ahead of Piastri. The stewards subsequently handed Russell a five-second penalty for gaining an advantage, reducing the usual sanction because it was a first-lap incident and he had also been fighting the Red Bull machine.
Piastri remained unconcerned that the initial contact with Russell had negatively affected his car's handling, suggesting instead that the difficulties were entirely consistent with the struggles he faced throughout the entire weekend. "Not that I’m aware of," Piastri told Sky Sports F1 when asked if he had suffered any vehicular damage. "I don’t think it did anything. I mean the car felt more or less the same it did all weekend. So yeah, a difficult one. At least we kept George behind after the stops. But just a tricky weekend."
The McLaren driver had already expressed heavy frustration with the car setup after qualifying in seventh position, and Sunday’s grand prix did little to alter that assessment. When asked whether the core problem involved low-speed handling limitations or a general lack of predictability, Piastri was unable to isolate just one single cause.
"A bit of both. The car is just very very difficult to extract the performance from," he explained. "I think if you can do it, it’s reasonably quick. But trying to do it is, as I said yesterday, very very tough. We’re continuing to work on it, and hopefully we can get there soon."
Following his early tussle with Russell, Piastri dropped behind teammate Lando Norris on lap eight when the team executed a position swap due to diverging strategies. After pitting for hard compound tyres on lap 16 to commit to a one-stop race strategy, Piastri carved his way back through the order, eventually staying ahead as the Mercedes closed in during the final laps.
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