Why Piastri is chasing answers to a ‘bigger question’ heading into the Monza weekend

Oscar Piastri believes he and McLaren have "got ideas on how we can make things better" ahead of this weekend's Italian Grand Prix, after the Australian has struggled for performance in recent races.

Team mate and reigning World Champion Lando Norris has put McLaren back on top in Formula 1 after winning the two previous races in Hungary and the Netherlands.

Although Piastri fought for the win in the former before retiring, he was noticeably lacking pace compared with Norris at Zandvoort, finishing 32 seconds adrift of the race winner.

The Dutch Grand Prix marked a complete year since Piastri stood on the top step of the podium, having watched his lead in last year's drivers' standings eventually surpassed by Norris.

Speaking on Thursday's media day ahead of the Italian Grand Prix, Piastri admitted that his struggles were not due to one reason specifically, making it harder to rectify.

"I think it's never been the same issue or thing we're chasing every weekend. It's always been slightly different which I think kind of raises a bigger question," he said.

"If it was just one thing we kept struggling with it would, in some ways, be a bit of an easy fix but I think the fact we've kind of found different ways of having difficulty, we've been trying to answer that question.

"And we are getting closer, finding more ideas and ultimately the only way you can really solve it is by trying stuff on track. Not saying that we've gone away and found this problem, we've definitely got ideas on how we can make things better, both from how I drive the car and how we set up the car.

"Hopefully we can find something that works a bit better. I think in Zandvoort, Qualifying was a much bigger step, Lando and I were very close but clearly in the race there was a deficit. That's the area we're trying to work on."

Piastri believes that the new-for-2026 regulations have created a breed of car which he has struggled to adapt to, while bad luck and reliability problems have also played their part.

"There's definitely things that have not been as easy or as comfortable this year compared to last year," he said.

"Some things we can fix quickly, some things we can't. I think these cars in general, the concept is very different, the tyres are quite different.

"There's a lot of things as well that are not necessarily in our control. Also this season not been easy for other reasons, we've had a lot of struggles with reliability or bad luck."