26 October 2026 15:30 (UTC)
Lando and Oscar showed plenty of grit at COTA to secure a good amount of points, but both were left wanting more
Lando took pride in the way he and the team ‘put themselves in the best position for a good result’ during a hard-fought battle in Austin and feels victories are eminently achievable in what remains of the 2026 season – if the right improvements are made.
Lando gained three places from his starting position of eighth on the grid to bank 10 points from his P5 finish, leaving the reigning World Champion with mixed emotions.
Having opted to pit early in COTA, swapping his Medium tyres for Hards on Lap 16, Lando sat second in the closing stages as others decided to box for a second time. But despite digging in admirably to hold off the chasing pack for as long as he could, the fresher tyres of Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton ultimately knocked him out of podium contention.
The British driver had no complaints with the one-stop strategy taken, which could have paid off in the event of a Safety Car, and was pleased with the outcome, while retaining an ambition for tweaks to be made to the MCL40 between now and the end of the campaign.
“The pace on the Hard was very strong,” he said. “But I’m having to push way beyond what I would do in an ideal scenario. I gave myself the best opportunity for a good result, which was hoping for a VSC or Safety Car, or whatever it was.
“We certainly gave ourselves the best shot. By the end of the race, it didn’t look like it, because I’m paying the price of trying to get the best result, especially in that middle part of the race. But P5 was the best we could achieve today, so I’m happy.
“I feel I drove a very strong race and managed to give myself the best of every opportunity we had. We’re just still not quick enough to do anything surprising or really be able to come through. Where we were after the first 10 laps was where I was at the end of the race, with the pace. We need a little bit more.”
Lando could have been starting from higher up the grid had he not been hit with a track limits violation during his final lap in Q3 on Saturday, when a time which originally put him sixth was scratched from the record. Starting from the fourth row of the grid was always going to make his task a tricky one, but his Texan outing has left him with no doubt as to where improvements can be made as we seek to find an edge in the battle for third in the Constructors’ Championship. We head to Mexico level with Red Bull on 355 points.
“There have been a lot of races where we’ve shone and done a really good job,” Lando added. “The Qualifyings, we’ve struggled.
“I think we roughly know where we need to improve the car and here it has been very clear that the very slow speeds, so Turns 12, 13, 15, we have been losing almost three-tenths a lap, every single lap. That’s a chunky bit of lap time to lose so consistently.
“We need to improve in certain areas, and if we can do that, I’m still very confident we can have good results this year. But it seems to be a challenging area for us to be able to improve as much as we would like. We’ll keep working hard, the team are doing a really good job, and we’ll keep trying to pick away.
“We know exactly what we’ve got, we’ve just got to improve it. We’ve certainly made some improvements, but it needs to be much bigger, and we need a lot more.”
Oscar, meanwhile, reflected on a ‘challenging’ weekend after finishing P7. The Australian did superbly to keep George Russell in his rear-view mirror, showing his defensive driving talent to stay in front of the Mercedes driver for 20 laps, but knows he needs more pace if he is to find his way towards the very top end of the grid.
“The car is just very difficult to extract the performance from,” he said. “If you can do it, it’s reasonably quick, but trying to do it is very tough. We are continuing to work on it and hopefully we can get there soon.
"We were able to keep Russell behind at least, which was good, but it was pretty challenging to get lap time out of the car which has been the same all weekend.”
