McLaren’s Oscar Piastri has revealed that he is eager to sort out his “inconsistency” in coming F1 races.
Following controversy surrounding his move to McLaren from Alpine – where he was reserve driver in 2022, Piastri has scored five points from two top-ten finishes in his rookie season.
“I think I have gotten up to speed pretty well,” reflected Piastri to mclaren.com as he added: “I am getting more experience in every race, and I am learning all of the time, and I feel like, generally, the pace has been pretty good.”
The 22 year-old Australian however isn’t totally happy despite his positive pace, as he explained: “There have been a few mistakes here and there, which I am trying to get rid of, and a bit of inconsistency, but I think that on my good days, I have been on the pace, which has been nice so early on in my rookie year.”
“I think it is the inconsistency from track to track,” pinpointed Piastri on his biggest issue as he described his performances as “a bit up and down at the moment,” but iterated that he is working on removing that weakness amidst tight competition.
Piastri though had praise for one of McLaren’s rivals for their progress this season as he explained: “Aston Martin made a big jump, which was a surprise, but it is so close from 10th on the grid backwards.
“Depending on the weekend, the order from 10th to 20th can be jumbled up from around five teams – it is incredibly tight. We have seen some exceptionally close qualifying sessions so far this year, and we have been on both the good and the bad end of those.”
Piastri also spoke how “thorough” his debriefs have been with the team after each session, as he spoke of diving “into a lot of detail,” with determination to “draw clear conclusions from it all,” which he believes has been “reciprocated” by both himself and his engineering side of the team.
He even added that he had tried to conduct those in-depth debriefs with Alpine and teams like PREMA – who he drove for in F2 and F3 during his junior career, so is happy that he and McLaren “are on the same page.”
McLaren though had endured a difficult start to the season before upgrades in Baku, Azerbaijan saw their campaign begin to improve, with Piastri running on the cusp of the top-ten throughout that weekend despite failing to score points in the Sprint nor Grand Prix itself.
Piastri however iterated that there is still progress to be achieved, as he continued: “It is in a bit of a different direction to how the car was previously, so there is more potential with the development of the car.
“To catch the top teams, we need more development, but I think we have been getting on top of the setup of the current car. We have been fine-tuning it and trying to get the last little bits out of it. I think we have nailed that part, and now we need some bigger bits to take that next step.”
Piastri also noted that this year’s McLaren works best “when it is cold and damp,” which he believes is their main “strength”, as underlined by Lando Norris qualifying third for the Spanish Grand Prix.
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