Oscar Piastri bad luck streak under Brundle microscope

If it was not for bad luck, then Oscar Piastri would have no luck at all. This has been the case for almost a full year now.

That is the opinion put forward by Sky F1 commentator Martin Brundle after Piastri’s Hungarian Grand Prix victory hopes unravelled with the double whammy of a collision with Carlos Sainz and a gearbox failure.

Oscar Piastri bad luck streak earns Brundle sympathy

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Piastri went on the attack at the start of the Hungarian Grand Prix and took the lead. It was a position which he maintained, as teammate Lando Norris in second made the request to pit first. That was denied under papaya rules.

For Piastri, things went south in the laps following his second stop. As he looked to lap Sainz into Turn 2, the Williams driver, who was in combat with Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin, cut back across the track and collided with Piastri’s McLaren.

Piastri continued, but his chances of winning the race took a blow. Norris was able to pit and come back out ahead of Piastri.

To cap off a frustrating day for Piastri, he was later forced to retire with a broken gearbox.

There is a theory that Piastri’s aura has dulled a little with the collapse of his 2025 title challenge, and an at times tricky first-half of F1 2026.

Brundle just calls it bad luck which seems stubborn to relent.

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In his Sky Sports column after the Hungarian Grand Prix, Brundle wrote: “It was the second round of stops on this high tyre wear circuit that made the difference.

“Piastri pitted on Lap 33 again to cover [Lewis] Hamilton on fresh tyres, and then Norris had his chance to prove he was indeed faster by running hard and pitting on Lap 39, giving him a decent tyre life offset to his teammate Piastri.

“On that same Lap 39, Piastri was coming up to lap Carlos Sainz’s Williams who was having his own battle with fellow countryman Fernando Alonso, and after running wide in the infamous Turn 2 which had given Piastri the lead on the opening lap, and which must have looked for all the world to Piastri that he’d seen him and was letting him through, just as Sainz swung heavily back to the racing line and clashed with the race leader.

“Sainz had been informed by his Williams team but his position on the outside of a 180 degree turn meant he had no mirror sight of Piastri tight on the inside, and so his penalty was mitigated down to five seconds, which was zero comfort to a rightly angry Piastri.

“Piastri did well not to spin out but he lost crucial time and Norris would emerge from the pits into a lead he would not relinquish. In fact, he would relentlessly increase it despite a third stop under a Virtual Safety Car for fresher soft compound tyres on Lap 56 to recover, so painfully, Piastri’s McLaren which had suffered transmission failure.

“The young Australian hasn’t been able to catch any kind of lucky break for the best part of a year now.”

On the plus side, Piastri goes into the summer break knowing that McLaren now has a car capable of winning, after the successful introduction of the Hungary upgrades.

But, despite Brundle’s support, Piastri believes that there is work to do on his side to capitalise fully on this car’s performance.

“Yes it is,” Piastri told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets when presented with the above theory following the Hungarian Grand Prix.

“Clearly for myself, today wasn’t very straightforward after the first stint. So there’s definitely a lot of work to do for me.

“But clearly the pace in the car is there if you can extract it.

“So I’ll just try and improve on myself, because I felt like even though I led half of the race, not many things went right to be able to do that. If we can find a bit of pace, then hopefully we’ll get there a bit more comfortable.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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