Piastri vows to come back stronger as McLaren boss lays out blunt reality

Under the Yas Marina floodlights, Oscar Piastri stepped off the Abu Dhabi podium having lost a world championship that had felt, for months, like it was tilting his way. He had just finished second on the road, third in the points, and watched his McLaren team mate Lando Norris crowned champion. But behind closed doors, the story was less about what slipped away and more about what he plans to do with the scar tissue.

Piastri’s numbers are the cold part of the tale: seven wins, 410 points, and a title bid that led the standings by as much as 34 points before unravelling in a bruising late-season slump. Norris and Max Verstappen hunted him down; by Abu Dhabi, Piastri needed the stars to align. They didn’t.

“Honestly, pretty good. I knew that going into today I needed the stars to align to win the championship,” he told Formula 1 after the finale, insisting there was nothing left on the table strategically or behind the wheel. The disappointment was real, but so was the perspective.

“I think, obviously, I would have wished for a slightly different ending, but I think this year I’ve learned a hell of a lot about myself as a race car driver, myself as a person… there are definitely lessons from this year that will only make me stronger.”

— Oscar Piastri, speaking to Formula 1 and GPblog

Across Abu Dhabi debriefs and post-season interviews, a consistent theme emerged in Piastri’s own verdict. “When things have been good this year, I’ve felt unstoppable at points – and to even be able to get to that point is a pretty cool feeling,” he told Australia’s press, while stressing that the dark stretch from Baku through Austin, Mexico and Brazil had forced him to confront “tough moments, adversity, from different directions”.

That mix of invincibility and vulnerability is exactly what intrigues those close to him at McLaren. Team principal Andrea Stella has been, in public at least, unequivocal: he believes Piastri can win the drivers’ championship “multiple” times, even after seeing his driver buckle just as Norris steadied himself. The relationship between the pair has always had a quiet intensity; here, Stella’s message was that 2025 was an education, not an indictment.

Zak Brown’s verdict has been more blunt, but it points the same way. Speaking to Formula 1 in the days after Abu Dhabi, the McLaren CEO didn’t pretend the way the title slipped away was anything but brutal: Piastri’s campaign “began to unravel” after his Baku crash and the run of five podium‑less races that followed. Yet Brown refused to frame his driver as a beaten man.

“He is a future World Champion… Of course, he’ll be disappointed, but I don’t think there’s anything he needs to pick himself up from. I think he just needs to go again.”

— Zak Brown, speaking to Formula 1

That mix of hard truth and backing carried into McLaren’s own end‑of‑season celebration back at the factory. In footage from the internal awards night, Brown joshed his drivers in an X‑rated speech that underlined both his confidence and his memory. Turning to Piastri, the American cracked: “We took big risks on both of you… And don’t pretend you had better options, you had f*****g Alpine!” It was a savage, if light‑hearted, reminder of the contract saga that first bound them together – and of how far Piastri has travelled since.

For Piastri, the deeper verdict is his own. He has repeatedly described 2025 as “head and shoulders above” his first two F1 seasons and says that, if someone had offered this haul of poles, wins and podiums back in March, he “definitely” would have taken it. The sting is not that he failed; it is that for six months he made becoming Australia’s first world champion in 45 years feel normal.

Abu Dhabi, though, showed there is trust as well as tension inside McLaren’s papaya bubble. The team still split strategies and let their drivers race; Piastri attacked Norris around the outside on lap one and was praised by Brown afterwards rather than reined in. Behind closed doors, the message from management has been clear: the equality policy stays, and both drivers remain free to fight.

That will test Piastri in a different way. Norris now has the title, the number one on the car and the psychological high ground that comes with finally converting promise into a championship. Piastri has the opposite – the sense, as one RaceFans analysis put it, of “deep disappointment at leading the championship for six months only to lose it” – and a winter to decide how to use it.

“Ultimately… there’s a little bit of disappointment, obviously, but I think I can be very proud of the season I’ve had and plenty of lessons to take to the future… It’s only my third attempt at this in F1… there are definitely lessons from this year that will only make me stronger.”

— Oscar Piastri, speaking to Formula 1 and GPblog

In three months’ time, when his home grand prix in Melbourne opens the 2026 season, those lessons will be on display. Between now and then, Piastri has promised to step away, reset and come back as the version of himself he glimpsed in 2025 – the one who, in his own words, felt “unstoppable”. Brown and Stella have delivered their honest verdict. Now it is up to Piastri to turn a lost title into the making of a champion.