Piastri’s development “accelerated” since Chinese GP

Oscar Piastri is impressing McLaren with the progress he has made in his second season at the team.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella identified the Chinese Grand Prix in April as a turning point for the driver. Piastri has scored 40 points over the last three races, just eight fewer than his experienced team mate Lando Norris.

“After China, we looked at what we had learned in the first part of the season together with Oscar’s engineers, and we found a couple of opportunities that we started to work on,” Stella explained. “And I have to say that they seem to be delivering an acceleration in Oscar’s development.

“There’s always underlying development, but in this case, both in terms of pure speed, which you can see in qualifying, And in terms of race craft, I think we have seen Oscar competing at a very high level and, like I say, an acceleration in his development.”

Norris won the first race after China while Piastri’s afternoon was compromised by contact with Carlos Sainz Jnr. Piastri then qualified second at Imola, but lost the place due to a penalty, and finished second in Monaco. He took fifth in Canada, six second behind his team mate.

Stella said Piastri gained valuable experience of mastering F1’s highly sensitive tyres during the Chinese Grand Prix, in co-operation with his race engineer Tom Stallard. His result was again compromised when a rival damaged his car.

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“Specifically in China, that was a race in which tyre degradation and managing tyre degradation was important,” he said. “We reviewed what was the objective entering the race in terms of managing tyres, how we executed, how we interacted with the driver during the race, what should have been the contribution of the engineers, what should have been the realisation of the drivers. That’s the kind of things you review.

“In all those aspects, we found ways of doing a better job altogether. So that’s the kind of conversations you have with a driver to then try and move on, not only driver, but also the engineering support.”

Piastri did not race in 2022, when he was a reserve driver for Alpine, so the experience he gained last year is also paying off, Stella believes.

“Coming back to the same tracks is definitely important. There’s a sense of familiarity, there’s historical data, there’s a lot of things that you review after year one.

“But…