Oscar Piastri says he tried a lot of different things in Mexico as it needed change and he felt he made progress, as he reflects on the new learning experience.
The last two weekends has been the toughest for McLaren’s Piastri, where the Australian lost his F1 points lead to teammate Lando Norris by one point, while the lead to Max Verstappen was cut down as well. The tricky conditions made it difficult for the youngster to lose momentum.
The lack of grip hurt Piastri in different ways, which forced the Australian to change his driving style, especially at the crucial stage of the championship. Both in Austin and Mexico, the McLaren racer hard to work deep, where he thinks he has made progress on adapting the style.
“It’s difficult to say ultimately, I think we certainly tried a lot of different things, but at the back with cars as well, so it was difficult to kind of get a read on whether what I was changing with my driving was working that well or not,” said Piastri to media. “But ultimately, yeah, we’ll have to analyse it and see if it looks good and in terms of the numbers and stuff, because, from a feeling point of view, when you’re behind that many cars, it’s very difficult to tell.
“Difficult to say. It wasn’t so much the pace of the car, because the car was pretty quick in Mexico. It was more just trying to unlock it, and I felt like I potentially made some steps in doing that. But yeah, ultimately, when you’re behind so many cars and trying to fight for so long, it’s difficult to measure that a little bit. So hopefully we’ll get a bit more indication from some of the data,” summed up Piastri.
Even with three years in his pocket, the phase has been a learning one. He admitted that things that worked for him in the season so far, it didn’t in the two races, but he managed to make it a learning experience, which will be useful the next time he faces such conditions.
“Certainly a learning experience for sure,” continued Piastri. “For some reason the last couple of weekends has required a very different way of driving. What’s worked well for me in the last 19 races has needed something very different the last couple of weekends, and trying to wrap my head around why has been a bit of a struggle.
“But ultimately, Mexico was about trying to experiment with some of those things because, I would agree, I think driving the way I’ve had to drive these last couple of weekends is not particularly natural for me. So it’s been about trying to exploit as much as I can. [The future will be to] find more pace and win some races,” summed up Piastri.
Team boss Andrea Stella concurred with the Australian, and feels it was an experience that will be useful in time to come. He thinks it is not just for Piastri, but the whole team that has to pull through considering the challenge being thrown by Verstappen and Red Bull for the drivers’ title.
“After qualifying [in Mexico], we reviewed with Oscar extensively from a data, comment, video point of view and I think we extracted some important information in terms of how the car is going to be driven in these special low-grip conditions that we faced in Mexico, to some extent, like we said, similar to Austin,” started Stella, when asked about Piasti.
“It looks like in this regime, you have to drive the car in a way that adapts to the fact that the car slides a lot and can slide and produce lap time. And this is not necessarily the way in which Oscar feels naturally that he is producing lap time. So, we identified a few things that we could do with the car and a few things that he could do with the driving.
“I think Oscar should be very proud of himself, of how he has handled the transition from qualifying to race. We could see in the race that he was applying this. He definitely had a more competitive pace and it’s a bit of a shame that he was not in condition to fully use this pace because we could not find a way to just get him out of traffic. He spent the entire race looking at the gearbox of the car ahead.
“But it’s important for Oscar that we go through this kind of experience in which we learn new tools to add to the toolbox because that’s how you become the most complete version of a Formula One driver. And this is also important for the next four races in which we’re going to find, again, different conditions. So we need to be ready for all of them. But I think Oscar should be very proud and happy with his race,” summed up Stella.
Here’s Oscar Piastri helmet auction
Here’s Oscar Piastri on Mexico GP
Here’s Lando Norris on Mexico GP
