Damon Hill Urges Fans to “Spare a Thought” for Oscar Piastri After Brutal Start to 2026 Season

Oscar Piastri has suffered from a dramatic start to the 2026 season. Despite looking extremely strong in 2025 and almost winning the driver’s title, the new regulations haven’t been so meritorious for him. In the first two races of the season, Piastri has suffered from a DNS. As such, the 1996 F1 champion, Damon Hill, believes that the Aussie is still very relevant in fighting for the driver’s title.

Since the beginning of the 2026 season, Oscar Piastri has suffered from tumultuous performances. At his home race of the Australian GP, he suffered from an embarrassing crash during the practice race start ahead of the race. Meanwhile, he was unable to start the Chinese GP due to critical problems in McLaren’s challenger. Hence, until now, Piastri hasn’t even participated in a race to be counted towards the championship fight.

Oscar Piastri’s only points finish this season has been the Chinese GP, where he finished in P6 and achieved three points in the standings. This places the Aussie P12 in the championship standings, much farther from his desired goal. Now, Damon Hill believes that Piastri is one of the very unlucky drivers who is simply suffering from a poor spell of races.

Damon Hill asked the people to spare a thought for Oscar Piastri, who was the championship favorite for a majority of the 2025 season. The Aussie started the new season, but did not participate in either of the two races, which remained disappointing. Ultimately, Hill reckoned that one couldn’t comment on both McLaren drivers as they both did not even start the new season properly and were already suffering from issues.

But my point being, spare a thought for Oscar. I think someone asked the question, ‘Who has ever started a season, but not started [the first] two races?’ So we can’t comment on the McLaren drivers because they haven’t actually done anything yet.

Damon Hill said on the Stay on Track podcast.

Damon Hill believes McLaren “made a step forward” in China

Despite the woeful start to the Chinese GP, McLaren still managed to take in great learnings from the weekend. Damon Hill believes that they made a step forward following their performances during the Chinese GP sprint race. Still, many people suspect that Mercedes is not revealing all the information about their power units, which could help their customer teams perform better on track.

Damon Hill pointed out how Toto Wolff was teasing McLaren about not being able to unlock the full potential of the Mercedes engine. Regardless of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris‘ current form, Hill is confident that they can fight against Ferrari, if not Mercedes. The Italian constructor is currently the second-best team, and defeating them would mean a lot to Woking.

I thought they made a little bit of a step forward when they were running, [in the Sprint] in China. You remember this noise that the Mercedes-running teams were complaining a little bit that Mercedes were not letting them know exactly what they were doing. It’s how you use it, not what you’ve got. I just don’t know where their ultimate peak is, whether it’s up there with Mercedes. Maybe they can threaten Ferrari a bit.

Damon Hill noted.

Lando Norris isn’t too concerned with McLaren’s woes right now, as they have gone through a similar spell of poor performances. Moreover, Woking will be able to work on their car over the five-week break. Norris feels that the team must take maximum benefit of this and hit the ground running much better following the culmination of the break. Meanwhile, Oscar Piastri will hope to atleast start the races and worry about other things later on.

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