Oscar Piastri said on Thursday at Spa that he expects to remain with McLaren next season, brushing aside the latest round of speculation linking Max Verstappen to his seat. The McLaren driver said he trusts what Zak Brown and Andrea Stella have told him, and that he is happy with where he is and the people around him.
The timing matters because the talk has not gone away, even with Brown saying he is satisfied with McLaren’s current line-up and Mark Webber describing much of the chatter as fiction. Piastri’s own view was calmer than the noise around him: he said he appreciates the trust and support he has been shown and sees no reason to think his place is under immediate threat.
That did not stop the questions from following him into the Belgian Grand Prix weekend. Verstappen, when asked ahead of the race, said there was nothing to say about the reports, leaving the rumor mill to keep turning while McLaren and its drivers tried to focus on the track. Piastri has stronger reasons than most to sound relaxed. He won at Spa last year, while his last outing at Silverstone ended with no points after an opening-lap collision and an unscheduled pit stop.
He also sounded realistic about McLaren’s short-term pace. Piastri said the team is likely to be third or fourth quickest, depending on how competitive Red Bull look this weekend, and that new parts should help. Even so, he said McLaren will need more than the upgrades planned for the next few races, which suggests the team sees the current package as a step forward rather than a fix.
That is the heart of the story: Piastri is behaving like a driver who expects to stay, but the uncertainty around a possible Verstappen move has not been put to rest by anyone involved. McLaren’s next test comes with the planned upgrades for the next round in Hungary, and those developments may matter more than the speculation if the team can turn the car’s pace into results.
