Piastri already “keeping me on my toes” at McLaren

Piastri’s F1 debut was much anticipated after McLaren snatched the 2021 Formula 2 champion away from Alpine in last summer’s standout silly season saga.

And the 21-year-old Australian hasn’t disappointed so far. Following a disjointed Bahrain weekend for McLaren, Piastri proved a match for Norris in Saudi Arabia and he also ran his more experienced team-mate close in Melbourne as the pair grabbed the Woking squad’s first points of the campaign.

Afterwards, Norris praised his new team-mate for pushing him right from the start.

“He’s done a very good job. I think he’s understood the car well, it’s obviously not an easy car to drive,” he said.

“For sure, I think he did a very good job in Saudi. He got into Q3, the only Q3 this year so far. So, he’s keeping me on my toes.”

Norris also pointed out that Piastri’s feedback is more similar to his than his predecessor Daniel Ricciardo, who left the team after two tough years.

“Our comments are probably a little bit more in line than what they have been in previous years,” Norris noted.

“Which again, is a good thing, just because it’s better a dynamic for keeping the focus for the engineers, the aerodynamicists, the rest of the team back in MTC.

“We kind of want the same anything in general and I think that’s a good thing. So, from both sides, the off-track and the on-track, it’s a good start and he’s keeping me on my toes.”

Team boss Andrea Seidl concurred that Piastri has hit the ground running and is already closer to Norris than Ricciardo, which was the whole idea behind swapping the two Australians in the first place.

“Certainly, what we see is that Oscar is close to Lando in most of the corners, like [in Australia] he lost a couple of tenths in a single corner, which gives references to Lando himself,” said Stella.

“When your team-mate is so competitive, then he becomes a reference for you, and you take advantage like Lando is doing.

“I would say this year the closeness between the two drivers is certainly much better than what we saw last year.”