Piastri at Monza: A Year Later, Team Orders Are No Longer the Biggest Issue

A year after McLaren stirred controversy with team orders at Monza, Oscar Piastri returns to the fastest circuit on the Formula 1 calendar with a different question: Is he losing ground to his own teammate? Fans still remember last year's race as a turning point. The engineering team asked the two drivers to hold position, and Piastri had to swallow a result that could have been different. Twelve months later, the picture has changed. Not because McLaren's leadership shifted, but because the new technical regulations created a car with significantly less downforce. In that environment, Piastri's driving style is exposing a blind spot nobody saw last season. Based on my own race-watching experience from the start of this season, Piastri remains quick in low-speed mechanical-grip corners. But when the car becomes more slippery at high speed, he struggles more than Lando Norris to keep the rear tyres from overheating. Andrea Stella, McLaren's team principal, has said repeatedly that Piastri needs to develop techniques that do not come naturally to him. That is diplomatic language for a precise problem: low downforce forces a driver to be smoother, to place the car's nose earlier and to manage the tyres with throttle rather than steering. Piastri belongs to the instinctive school of drivers who like to throw the car into corners; when the surface demands subtlety, he pays the price. Zandvoort was the clearest example. In qualifying, Piastri improved significantly compared with his own recent baseline. He said in the press conference that his single lap was significantly better. But in the race, the pace did not follow. Telemetry data showed he lost more time in the high-speed sector and could not follow Norris through a long stint. If you only look at the results sheet, you might call it a strategy problem. Look deeper, and it becomes a car-style mismatch. I do not believe in luck. I believe in numbers that have been verified three times. The practice data from Zandvoort says Piastri is improving session by session, but from a starting point lower than Norris in low-downforce conditions. At Monza, where 80 percent of the lap is full throttle or heavy braking from more than 330 km/h, this blind spot will be exposed more than anywhere else. Monza is not the shock; it is the tip of an iceberg we chose not to see when the new regulations were announced. Many will say Piastri only needs a bit of luck in the race to change the narrative. But running a race team is not like cheering in the grandstand. Here, the decision to give number one status to a driver is based on percentage points of championship advantage, not emotion. If McLaren had to choose a driver for a title fight right now, the data favours Norris. Not because Norris is faster everywhere, but because he can extract the maximum from a low-downforce car — what engineers call driving with the hips, balancing the car with throttle and brake instead of relying on aerodynamic load. Numbers never lie, but the people reading the reports can. A comparison of lap times between two teammates may make you think they are only 0.2 seconds apart. But if you break the data into individual corners, you will see Piastri winning in slow corners while Norris runs away in the fast ones — where low downforce exposes the ability to read the track. At Monza, that ratio tilts heavily towards Norris. I remember last season when people said Piastri was the future, a potential world champion. Yes, he has that quality. But talent is not value. A driver's value is not in the steering wheel; it lies in how he is priced within a technical system. A system that is changing under new regulations will always bet on the driver who adapts fastest. Norris is showing that; Piastri is not. Nobody can say Piastri lacks effort. He spends more time in the simulator than any driver I have seen. But low-downforce driving cannot be learned in a simulator alone. It requires physical feel, hundreds of real laps to build muscle memory. And in a season of only 24 races, time waits for no one. Andrea Stella is shrewd. He does not say outright that Piastri is slower, but when a team principal publicly talks about unnatural techniques, it is a signal that the team has begun adjusting its development plan. They will not redesign the car for one driver. They will ask the driver to change. And if the driver cannot change fast enough, the number two position will become his fate. Monza this year is therefore a psychological test more than a speed test. Piastri needs to prove he can drive a slippery car at high speed without losing control. Norris has nothing to prove; he just needs to do what he is already doing. When the stadium is empty, cash flow is the only player left on the pitch. In F1, that cash flow is points — and the points are flowing toward whoever adapts better. If Piastri keeps his natural driving style at Monza, I predict he will finish at least 12 seconds behind Norris in the main race. Not because of a lack of speed, but because his rear tyres will degrade earlier. And once the rear tyres lose grip, every lap effort becomes meaningless. A year ago, team orders cost Piastri a victory; a year later, the new car might keep him out of a position to receive orders at all. The interesting thing is that fans are taking sides. One group believes Piastri deserves priority because he was faster in the middle of last season. The other thinks Norris should be protected. Both have emotional reasons, but nobody looks at the long-term picture: the new regulations last until at least 2027, and if Piastri does not solve his weakness in a low-downforce environment, he will waste two of the best years of a running contract. I have followed F1 since the V10 era, when engineers said the driver made a bigger difference than the car. Today, everything has changed. The car is 90 percent, the driver is 10 percent. But that 10 percent decides who becomes champion in equal machinery. That is why Piastri cannot blame the car or the tactics. He is in a team with enough resources to build a championship-winning car; the remaining task is to turn his 10 percent into an advantage. At Monza, top speed will exceed 350 km/h. Everything happens too fast for much thought. But it is in those fastest moments that a driver's instinct is revealed. Piastri has a wonderful instinct for finding overtaking opportunities, but he does not yet have the instinct to keep the car within limits when downforce drops. Norris has that instinct. And that is not something that can be trained overnight. So when you watch the race at Monza, do not just look at who leads after the first lap. Watch how Piastri handles the Parabolica — the place where a low-downforce car most easily steps out — and compare it with Norris. If he still enters the corner with too much steering angle, the race will end as expected. If he opens the throttle earlier and keeps the car stable, maybe last year was simply a necessary stumble on the road to maturity. Monza is a historic circuit, a place of sprint races and breath-taking slipstreams. But for an analyst, Monza this year is the clearest test of adaptability for a driver who has been overrated by his own past victories. Piastri has won in Baku and Singapore, but those wins came on circuits that demand high downforce. At Monza, where everything is laid bare, he will face the truth. The question is not whether McLaren will issue team orders. The question is whether Piastri will still be the one who benefits from them. A year can change a great deal, especially when technical regulations change in ways nobody expected. Perhaps we have been too focused on the fight between teams and forgot that a driver's biggest threat often comes from inside his own garage. If I had to place a bet on the future, I would not back Piastri at Monza this year. But I would back him for the 2027 season, if he is willing to listen to Stella. For now, let the numbers tell their own story. I do not believe in luck. I believe in numbers that have been verified three times. And those numbers, at this moment, point in one direction. That is why Monza this year is not a race between Piastri and his rivals, but a battle between Piastri and his own ego.