Oscar Piastri says the 2023 F1 season was quite the roller coaster and it was more than what he expected it to be as Andrea Stella adds his bit.
For his first season in F1, McLaren’s Piastri did have a wild ride. How it started was vastly different from how it ended. After the car improved massively, the Australian showed his pace too despite the rookie flavour of learning continuing on.
As he states, it was indeed a roller coaster ride for him and more than what he expected as he saw everything what a F1 driver goes through in his career at large. “It’s definitely been a bigger roller-coaster than I expected,” said Piastri to media. “I knew there would be ups and downs, maybe not as down at the start or as up at the end, but I’ve really learnt a lot.
“I feel like I’ve had basically every situation you could have, apart from a championship fight. So it’s been a good year in terms of learning. As a team, we’re learning how to compete at the front again, which is exciting. It’s not a position we’ve been in for 10 years, so nice to be having these conversations again, going through these scenarios.
“For me, it’s really a privilege to be fighting at the front so early in my career. There’s people that go their whole F1 career that don’t have the opportunity that I’ve had in 22 races. So I’m very, very grateful for that. And I’m looking forward to many more years to come where hopefully we can do that more often,” summed up Piastri.
Team boss Stella continued his praise for Piastri, while singling out some of the performances of the 2023 F1 season. The Italian talked about how the Australian quickly learned circuits like Suzuka where he didn’t race before and secured a podium.
On circuits where he knew, he was on pace straight on. The only flipside was tyre management scenario. On a track like Suzuka he put it in P2 on the grid, we really need to reflect for a second on the extent of this result,” said Stella. A track like Suzuka – not only is it high-speed, but it’s a very narrow track, it’s a very unforgiving track as soon as you go too wide because you have the gravel in some places.
“In terms of speed, in terms of capacity to learn very rapidly, in terms of collaborating with his engineers and extracting the information that he needs to grow so rapidly, in terms of his own awareness of where he is in the various stages to go from: ‘I know nothing about this track, first time in a Formula 1 car to being P2 on the grid.
“And also the way he keeps himself calm, controlled – therefore always capitalising on his potential because he doesn’t create any unnecessary stress – that’s quite exceptional. And I can see why he was so successful in junior categories. On tracks with which Oscar had a certain familiarity or on which Oscar could do FP1, FP2, FP3 sessions and the full [schedule], he was very competitive.
“But on tracks which he had never been to before, [where] you only do a P1 and then you go and do a Sprint, then you can see that the level you need to achieve to be very competitive is very high. So, we are extremely pleased with the level of performance that Oscar has been able to deliver once he had a fair amount of practice, which most of the time just means three hours before you go into qualifying,” summed up Stella.
Here’s F1 2023 teams’ tier order: https://formularapida.net/f1-2023-teams-categorised-in-tier-system-for-their-performances/
Here’s F1 2023 drivers’ tier order: https://formularapida.net/f1-2023-drivers-categorised-in-tier-system-for-their-performances/
Here’s team principals ranking Top 10
Here’s 19 drivers selecting Top 10 drivers of F1 2023
Here’s controversy involving Bianca Bustamante
Here’s Lando Norris on progressing in 2023
Here’s Zak Brown on Red Bull, AlphaTauri situation
Here’s McLaren being controlled by Bahrain
Here’s Lando Norris on slow start helping McLaren
Here’s Oscar Piastri on wanting to pat himself for delivering
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact