Oscar Piastri’s Mexico City Brake Lock-Ups Raise Questions for McLaren

Oscar Piastri’s brake confidence, rather than his position on the FP2 timesheet alone, was the clearest concern for McLaren at the 2026 Mexico City Grand Prix. He ended Friday’s second practice session in 10th, while teammate Lando Norris placed second. More tellingly, Piastri repeatedly locked his brakes and couldn’t complete a promising lap on the soft tyre.

Former driver and analyst Karun Chandhok said the pattern worried him. Piastri’s difficulties were visible across both practice sessions, Chandhok said, with the Australian appearing short of confidence under braking. Norris had his own early issues, but recovered enough to put together a competitive lap in FP2.

Norris made the stronger impression in FP2

Piastri was McLaren’s sole driver in FP1. Rookie Leonardo Fornaroli took Norris’s place in that session as part of the team’s rookie running. Norris therefore had only FP2 to get up to speed, yet he finished the hour in second with a 1:17.930. Charles Leclerc led for Ferrari with a 1:17.827, just 0.103 seconds ahead of Norris.

Piastri’s best lap was 1:18.469, putting him behind both Mercedes drivers, both Red Bull drivers, both Racing Bulls drivers and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly. The timesheet gives a straightforward measure of the gap, but the difference in how the two McLaren drivers completed their runs adds useful context: Norris recovered after an early lock-up, while Piastri’s braking troubles continued.

“I’m a bit worried about Piastri,” Chandhok said on Sky Sports F1. “I feel like he’s been really struggling on the brakes throughout this day. [In] both sessions, he’s not looked like he’s in a happy place with confidence in the brakes.” He added that Norris, despite sitting out FP1 and encountering early problems, had managed to “string a lap together.”

A near-spin interrupted Piastri’s soft-tyre run

Both drivers locked up into Turn 1 early in FP2, but Norris settled into the session. Piastri continued to have moments under braking, particularly at the opening corner, and didn’t convert his later soft-tyre attempt into a representative lap.

There were signs of progress: Piastri set personal bests in the first two sectors on the C5 Pirelli soft tyre. But he lost the rear of the car in the final corner and came close to spinning, ending the run before he could complete the lap. That left McLaren without a clean, fast final comparison of his pace on the softer compound.

Repeated lock-ups and an aborted lap don’t, by themselves, establish the cause of a driver’s difficulty. They do make braking confidence and rear stability key points to watch in the next running. Piastri’s session offered little evidence that he had yet found a consistent way to push the car into the corners, while Norris showed that a strong lap was possible in the MCL40.

Last year’s visit adds context, but not a forecast

Piastri’s difficult opening day came after a challenging 2025 Mexico City weekend. Norris won that race by 30.324 seconds and retook the lead in the drivers’ standings, while Piastri finished fifth, 42.065 seconds behind his teammate. The original account linked Piastri’s previous struggle to low grip from the asphalt and the car’s rear sliding.

Large sections of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez were resurfaced for this year’s event, and the 2026 car regulations have changed since that previous visit. Those differences mean last year’s result can’t explain Friday’s braking problems on its own. Still, Piastri has arrived at a circuit where he struggled before, and the opening sessions haven’t yet shown that he has a comfortable feel for the car.

McLaren’s MCL40 has been described as tricky to drive, but Norris’s second place sets a useful reference for what the car achieved in FP2. Piastri’s priority will be to find more consistency on the brakes and complete a representative lap without the rear stepping out. Until that happens, his 10th-place time may be less important than the driving issues behind it.