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Ted Kravitz has spoken about McLaren driver Oscar Piastri and how Formula 1’s changing regulations could harm his hopes of winning the 2026 championship.
Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris shared driving duties on the first day of testing in Bahrain on Wednesday.
The Australian driver set the second-quickest time of the morning session, but Norris came out on top between the two McLaren stars by the time the chequered flag flew.
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Piastri will be hoping to put the disappointment of missing out on the drivers’ championship last season behind him this year.
Going into the 2026 campaign, Piastri has made changes to his backroom staff, but it’s the changes on the track that are going to be far more important to the 24-year-old.
Ted Kravitz has been speaking about the McLaren star and how the new regulations could end up hampering his chances of taking revenge on Norris.
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Oscar Piastri might be worried by low grip 2026 regulations change, says Ted Kravitz
Kravitz was providing an update from testing on Sky Sports F1 (11/2 8:37 am) and talking about McLaren, he said: “Piastri, up against Lando Norris, high on confidence.
“But I think what will happen to Piastri will be about whether these new cars suit his style.
“What might worry him is that they have all-round less grip, and if you remember where he lost touch with the performance of this McLaren last year, it was on low-grip circuits and low-grip circumstances.
“If the cars all around have low grip, that might be an issue that Piastri has to deal with.”
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Talking about McLaren’s approach to testing, Kravitz continued: “McLaren have done something different, in that they’ve waited as late as they can to put what’s pretty much their first race aero package on their car.
“Whereas others, like the Ferrari and the Mercedes and the Aston Martin are going to change.”
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Heading into the 2026 season, McLaren are one of the teams embroiled in a row over Mercedes’ power unit.
FIA bosses have made guarantees to Mercedes, but talking about the situation, Kravitz explained: “It comes down to interpretations in Formula 1, and whoever benefits from a clever interpretation, let’s say a clever double diffuser in Jenson Button winning a championship with Brawn in 2009, or even some of Adrian Newey’s designs have had clever interpretations.
“The other teams have tried to shut that down, but that very rarely happens in the middle of a season, or even at the start of the season.
“That’s what all the other manufacturers are trying to do, to shut down their clever interpretation before the season has even started.
“That would require a majority of people to vote against Mercedes, so they’re fighting very hard against that.
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“It’s going to come down to votes from Formula 1 and the FIA as to whether they make a rule change before the start of the year.
“But that could open up a whole area of controversy, and then Mercedes could easily say, ‘Well, the way that things are measured on the track, if that’s the way we’re going to measure things now, then we can do all sorts of things!’
“How are we going to measure front wing deflection on track? How are we going to measure rear wing deflection on track? Mercedes could go quite aggressively with that and cause issues that Formula 1 and the FIA don’t want to have. So I imagine a compromise will be met.”
McLaren are among the quartet of teams hoping that Mercedes don’t have to make any changes to their power unit before the season starts in Australia at the beginning of March.
It would create a huge amount of doubt around McLaren’s competitiveness in 2026, and that’s before you consider the potential pitfalls of the low grip conditions Piastri needs to master this season.
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