one of them is how he said that he finds it hard to pretend a situation is okay when it's clearly not. that he can’t do the whole “everything is fine” narrative when it very clearly isn’t. that his instinct is, and always has been, to acknowledge when a situation is bad and deal with it head-on, rather than try to look at it positively or spin the narrative or sweep it aside just to make it easier to process. and on its own, that’s just another insight into his personality.
but when we put that next to McLaren as an organization and how it operates, it becomes a lot more interesting. because McLaren’s whole approach, especially over the past season, has felt very much the exact opposite of what Oscar said about how he thinks as a person. they're very controlled, very much pushing the “we are a united front, everything is under control, we are one big happy papaya family.” even in moments where mistakes were obviously made or the tension was bubbling, the response has often been to smooth it over, redirect and maintain that image, rather than actually admit that mistakes were made, take accountability and offer solutions.
now you might say that other teams do this too, which, yes they do, but not to the same extent as McLaren. so we end up with this weird, underlying tension: a driver who seems fundamentally wired to confront problems vs a team culture that tends to ignore problems and pretend everything is all fine and dandy. and these two mindsets don't align.
so the question becomes: how do you function in that kind of environment without feeling like you're suffocating and losing your mind? if your instinct is to confront and resolve, but the system around you prioritizes the opposite, you’re constantly having to compromise and suppress your own way of thinking. and over time, that’s gonna be incredibly exhausting.
this is why i always felt that McLaren is not really the right place for Oscar, i just never had the evidence to actually prove why. i think he stayed solely because of the competitive car (or the promise of one, as of now). in F1, we know that, performance buys a lot of patience. but performance can only compensate so much if the environment itself doesn’t fit how you think and operate as a person.
so let's say he doesn’t connect with that culture, he finds it frustrating or even counterproductive, then it’s hard to see that being sustainable long-term. drivers don’t just need fast cars; they need environments where their mindset is compatible with the team's and where they feel comfortable, where they don’t feel like they’re constantly fighting their own team on top of other competitors.
this is why i believe that if a better opportunity arises in the near future, even if it's not as competitive as McLaren was, he'll take it.
the second thing is how he said he only speaks on the radio about problems when he feels like he can have influence over the outcome. which means that in the past season every time an unfair decision was made (like Monza or Singapore etc), every time he questioned something, every time he spoke up, he really felt like he could influence the outcome. he believed that he had enough standing, that he had the right to say it wasn't fair.
which just makes all those situations even more painful. because if you only speak up when you think it matters, and then it doesn’t matter anyway, what do you do with that? how many times do you try again before you stop believing you can influence anything at all? how many times do you try before you lose trust in your team?
but also another thing: when he said that if things had turned bad between him and Norris last season, (and i quote) “the question of one of us even sitting here doing this interview wearing orange” would come into play, that’s not a throwaway comment. because it means that, alongside everything else, he was also managing his position within the team. despite the “two number one drivers” narrative, the reality was a lot more complex, as we know. he was, effectively, still the second driver in terms of standing, history, and political capital. and he knew that.
i've talked about this many times last season, but he was navigating an incredibly narrow line: not rolling over and accepting everything, still speaking up when he believes something is wrong and standing up for himself, but also not pushing so hard that he destabilizes the internal dynamic or worse, turns the team against him entirely. because if it ever came down to firing one driver, it would've been him.
and when you layer that on top of everything else, the mismatch in mentality, the sense that his input isn’t really shifting outcomes, losing trust in the team, the lack of support in understanding the car in the second half of the season, fighting for his position within the team, the constant outside noise and rumours, mistakes made by McLaren, and just the sheer exhaustion that comes with a long season, it's really not that surprising that he couldn't hold onto the championship in the last leg of the season (in his first ever title fight). it’s what happens when a driver isn’t fighting just his competitors, but also the environment around him, and, increasingly, his place within it.
and i think he deserves a lot more grace and understanding when we talk about that.
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