Did Piastri fall back or gain on Norris in his second season at McLaren? · RaceFans

In his first year as a Formula 1 driver, Oscar Piastri did much to justify the hype which accompanied his arrival.

After all, he is the driver McLaren sensationally lured away from Alpine’s young driver programme, infuriating their rivals by handing him a full-time seat alongside Lando Norris.

By the second half of last year Piastri was regularly showing Norris up, out-qualifying him 6-5 during that time. Would that prove a springboard for an even more impressive second season?

Maybe not. Piastri performed less well in qualifying compared to Norris this year, the gap widening from 15-7 last year to 20-4. He spent a larger proportion of the season running behind his team mate on-track, too.

But those figures need a little more context – and Piastri’s performance was clearly better in other areas too.

He was unquestionably a clean pair of hands, for example, being the only driver to complete every lap of every grand prix. As a result, though Piastri spent more laps behind Norris he also spent more laps ahead of him.

The qualifying battle may have reflected less well on Piastri, but there were notable improvements from both drivers. Norris increasingly cut out the mistakes on single flying laps which aggravated him so much earlier in his career. Piastri was much more consistent: He seldom dropped more than three-tenths of a second behind Norris and was either within a tenth or ahead on 11 occasions.

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Most significantly, Piastri delivered, tripling his points total compared to the previous year.

There was a spell during the middle of the season when Piastri threatened to seriously upend Norris’s outside chance of winning the championship. Over a six-race spell he started behind his team mate but finished ahead four times.

Max Verstappen’s tactical belligerence towards his closest championship rival was undeniably a factor, but Piastri also proved himself a force to be reckoned with. Perhaps Verstappen sensed that too, which would explain his hasty half-move on the first lap of the season finale.

Towards the end of the year Norris sharpened up and finished ahead of Piastri more consistently. There were occasions where the senior driver clearly extracted more from the car.

While this might have been a case of Norris rising to the occasion in the championship, McLaren Racing CEO…