Piastri Splits With Webber as Winless McLaren Season Forces a Reset
Oscar Piastri's split from long-time manager Mark Webber comes late in a winless 2026 in which Lando Norris has outscored him by 94 points, raising hard questions about his McLaren future.
Oscar Piastri and Mark Webber announced in a joint statement on Monday, the day after the Brazilian Grand Prix, that Webber and his business partner Ann Neal will no longer manage the 25-year-old McLaren driver. The measured wording suggests a negotiated parting rather than a rupture, but the timing is striking. Piastri sits seventh in the championship, without a win in 2026 and 238 points behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli, and he has ended his most important professional relationship with three rounds still to run.
Webber, Alpine and the 2022 contract fight
Few people have shaped Piastri’s rise as much as Webber. The former Red Bull driver guided him through the junior single-seater ladder, and Piastri won the Formula Renault Eurocup, Formula 3 and Formula 2 titles in successive seasons. Webber’s most visible moment came in the summer of 2022.
Alpine announced Piastri as its 2023 race driver after Fernando Alonso’s departure to Aston Martin. Piastri publicly rejected the announcement, saying he had not signed and would not drive for the team. The Contract Recognition Board then ruled that he was free to join McLaren. It was an audacious piece of contract work, and Webber was widely seen as its architect. It also shaped how the paddock viewed Piastri: as a driver with a sharp, protective camp that would fight hard for his interests.
The results justified the gamble. Piastri won in Hungary and Baku in 2024. In 2025 he won repeatedly and led the championship for months, before his form faded in the closing phase of the season. Through all of it, Webber was a fixture in the McLaren garage. He was the clearest voice in Piastri’s corner during the intra-team tensions over how McLaren handled its two title contenders.
That history is why Monday’s announcement matters. Drivers change management all the time. They rarely walk away from the person who engineered their arrival at a front-running team.
Seventh place and a 94-point gap to Norris
The 2026 season explains the timing better than any statement could. The new regulations have handed Mercedes control of the championship. The team has 12 wins from 20 rounds, nine of them for Antonelli, and leads the constructors’ standings on 652 points. McLaren is fourth on 398, a long way from the team that set the pace a year ago.
A weaker car would offer Piastri some cover if Lando Norris were struggling too. He is not. Norris has won three times this year and converted pole into victory at Interlagos on Sunday. He has 246 points to Piastri’s 152. A 94-point deficit between team-mates in the same machinery is no longer a run of bad luck. It is a pattern, and McLaren’s leadership will have studied it closely.
Brazil captured the problem in miniature. Norris qualified on pole and won. Piastri started 10th and recovered to sixth, a decent drive that nonetheless left him with eight points to his team-mate’s 25. Max Verstappen came from 21st on the grid to finish second, and Isack Hadjar took third from fifth. Hadjar’s result has given Piastri a new worry. The Red Bull driver is now on 122 points, 30 behind Piastri, with three grands prix left in which to close the gap.
Piastri’s championship position also matters to the team. McLaren trails Red Bull by 17 points in the fight for third in the constructors’ standings, and both teams scored 33 points in Brazil. With Norris delivering his share, the battle will be decided largely by which second driver contributes more. That puts Piastri’s run-in under close scrutiny before anyone judges him on 2027.
| Driver | Points | Wins | Gap to leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lando Norris (McLaren) | 246 | 3 | 144 |
| Oscar Piastri (McLaren) | 152 | 0 | 238 |
| Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) | 122 | 0 | 268 |
The problems Webber could never fix
It would be easy to read the split as Piastri blaming his camp for a poor season. That would be unfair to Webber and probably wrong about Piastri. A manager does not set up a car, choose a tyre strategy or find the last tenth in a qualifying lap. Piastri’s problems this year have been on track: the 2026 car and its new power units, his adaptation to them, and his inability to match Norris across a full weekend.
A manager does shape the relationship between driver and team, and that is the more plausible reading of this change. Webber’s style was combative and highly visible, which suited a young driver who needed protection in 2022. It may suit a driver in Piastri’s current position less well. When you are clearly the second-quickest McLaren and the car is not winning races, an adversarial posture can harden into friction. Piastri may need a quieter, more collaborative conversation with the team, focused on how McLaren builds its 2027 car and how he fits into that work.
There is also a commercial side. Piastri is under a long-term McLaren contract, and his next negotiation may decide whether he remains a co-leader or settles into a supporting role. Whoever represents him next will begin that work from a weaker position than Webber enjoyed after 2025, because a season without a win has eroded the value of a driver who led the championship for months. A new representative could judge that market differently, and Piastri may want someone who will.
Hamilton’s 2010 split and the decisions that followed
Formula 1 has seen this kind of reset before, and it rarely remains a purely administrative matter. In 2010 Lewis Hamilton ended his management arrangement with his father, Anthony, who had steered him from karting to a world title at McLaren. The following season was the most turbulent of Hamilton’s early career, full of collisions, penalties and visible frustration. Within three seasons he had decided to leave McLaren for Mercedes, a move that later produced six more titles.
The comparison has obvious limits. Hamilton’s split was a family matter, whereas Piastri’s is a business relationship ending on apparently civil terms. The underlying pattern still holds. A driver who replaces the people around him is usually preparing for a bigger decision, whether that is renegotiating his role or eventually looking elsewhere. Neither path is announced in a joint statement, but the change in management makes both easier to pursue.
Webber’s own career adds another layer. He spent years at Red Bull alongside Sebastian Vettel, in a team that came to revolve around his team-mate. Few people understand better how that kind of dynamic can settle in, and how hard it is to reverse once it does. It is fair to wonder whether that experience made Webber the right adviser for this moment, or whether Piastri decided he needed a different perspective.
Las Vegas and the fight for seventh
The next test arrives quickly. Las Vegas on 22 November opens the final three-round stretch, and Piastri’s aims are now modest but meaningful. He must hold seventh place against Hadjar and help McLaren overturn its 17-point deficit to Red Bull. A strong finish would change the way this season is remembered, both inside the team and among rivals watching his contract situation.
Our view is that the split is a sensible move made at an awkward time. Piastri has nothing to gain from defending the structures that carried him to McLaren if they no longer serve the driver he now is. He has plenty to lose if the change is read as instability. The championship cannot rescue his season, but the next three weekends can still shape his standing in the team. If Piastri finishes ahead of Hadjar and closer to Norris, this will look like a confident reset. If he loses seventh place to a Red Bull driver, McLaren may begin its 2027 planning with the order between its drivers already settled.