Oscar Piastri concedes that he is still not a finished product yet despite the upswing in performance in F1, as he pin points qualifying as his weakness.
Much of his debut year, McLaren’s Piastri was a bit down on managing tyres until the end of the grand prix distance, where he was being picked upon by his rivals. Even if he got ahead of teammate Lando Norris or some of his rivals, the Brit and others would come back to retake the position and it happened at multiple events.
In his second year, the tyre management is still a bit of a worry, but he has progressed on that side as the year has went on. He showed the masterclass in Azerbaijan when he held off Charles Leclerc. Despite the upswing in his performances off-late, Piastri doesn’t think himself as a finished product yet.
“I think, it’s still a little bit everywhere,” said Piastri to media. “I would say, I’ve not made life easy for myself in qualifying this year. So, qualifying better, more consistently would help. I think I’ve been very happy with…particularly the elements I showed in Baku in terms of overtaking and, being under pressure and stuff like that, I was happy with.
“But yeah, there’s still going to be some tough races in the latter part of the year on tracks that I’ve only been to once. So just trying to work on some of the weaknesses I had at those tracks last year, is still going to be a key to the end of the season. So, just a bit of everything because I feel like I’m improving a lot as I go through my career, but I’m certainly not the finished product yet.”
When pressed on if he knows what he has to do on Saturday to get better, Piastri added: “I think just consistency more than anything. I’ve not really had many sessions apart from maybe Baku where I’ve been happy with my performance all the way from Q1 to the end of Q3. The gap has always been very small in pretty much all of those races.
“But I’ve always been on the wrong side of it. So I think it’s just a matter of consistency. I don’t feel like I need to try and find extra time or something like that. I think that my best performances are good enough to qualify on pole position in the right circumstances. But I just need to be at that level more consistently.”
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