– Has Oscar Piastri come a step closer to solving his problems in Zandvoort? The Australian has been waiting for a Formula 1 victory for more than a year and has not come close to the form in the current Formula 1 season that made him the top favorite for the world championship title just 365 days ago.
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Zandvoort also did not go according to plan for him (while teammate Lando Norris won), but he himself says that he found some answers in the two weeks before Monza. “I feel like we have some pretty good answers as to why Zandvoort was particularly challenging,” says the McLaren driver.
Piastri cannot name a specific reason for his problems – simply because there isn’t one. “It’s not the one problem that keeps coming up. We’re basically always chasing something else,” he says. “I think that was a bit of the challenge: that we don’t face the same problem every time.”
Sometimes his driving style harmonized with the car – and sometimes it didn’t. “For me, it’s just about finding the right direction – the things that make this car work. At times we were able to find that, at other points we tried a lot and didn’t succeed,” he admits. “So it’s not quite that simple.”
For Piastri, this sometimes meant that he did not feel comfortable in the car at all, making many things even more complicated. “You can very easily get into a spiral – in both directions,” he says. When you feel comfortable, you have significantly more capacity for other things because many things run unconsciously and more easily.
But: “If you don’t feel comfortable, you have to think a lot more, you no longer drive by instinct – and that’s why it can go downhill quite quickly,” he says, but also emphasizes that he is not yet “even close to that point.” “But so far it has definitely not been particularly easy to find quick solutions.”
In qualifying in the right direction
“I think we ultimately always found solutions, but it’s more about how we pick things up a bit faster and adapt more quickly over the course of the weekend. Many different factors come into play – it’s not as simple as just struggling with this one thing. There’s a lot involved.”
At least in qualifying in Zandvoort, things went back in the right direction. Piastri was only 0.058 seconds slower than teammate Norris in the sprint qualifying, and the 0.142 seconds deficit in the real qualifying was the smallest handicap since the weekend in Spielberg.
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McLaren – Qualifying & Race
| Grand Prix | Norris (Q) | Piastri (Q) | Norris (R) | Piastri (R) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 4 | 6 | 5 | |
| Australia | 6. (+0.095) | 5. | 5. | Did not start |
| China | 6. (+0.058) | 5. | Did not start | Did not start |
| Japan | 5. (+0.277) | 3. | 5. (+9.8) | 2. |
| Miami | 4. | 7. (+0.317) | 2. | 3. (+23.8) |
| Canada | 3. | 4. (+0.203) | Retirement | 11. |
| Monaco | 8. (+0.141) | 7. | Retirement | 5. |
| Barcelona | 4. | 7. (+0.089) | 3. | 5. (+34.9) |
| Austria | 6. | 7. (+0.009) | 7. (+9.7) | 4. |
| Great Britain | 6. | 8. (+0.155) | 4. | 11. (+2.9) |
| Belgium | 3. | 7. (+0.215) | 7. (+5.0) | 5. |
| Hungary | 1. | 5. (+0.477) | 1. | Retirement |
| Netherlands | 1. | 4. (+0.142) | 1. | 6. (+32.3) |
“The process we are going through is simply aimed at transferring that to the races as well,” says Piastri. “Of course, the car behaves very differently in the race than over a single lap, but I feel like we have some pretty good answers as to why Zandvoort was particularly challenging.”
“So I think we are making good progress there. We just need time and a few experiments to find things that make us faster. But I am confident that we will find the right answers and see a way forward.”
Norris extension “no surprise”
In the long term, Piastri will still have to assert himself against Lando Norris at McLaren, who has put himself in a much better position in recent months. The Englishman was able to overtake Piastri in the fight for the 2025 world championship, has him clearly under control this year, and has now also gained trust with a new contract until 2030.
Is Piastri threatened with the fate of the internal number 2 – the driver who may also be supported externally but is perhaps a little less loved internally? “Everything is fine with me for now,” he waves off. “My contract still runs for a while, so there is absolutely no reason to rush into such talks.”
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That the reigning world champion has committed to the team for the next few years – and vice versa – is not surprising to Piastri: “He just won the world championship with the team and the team has won the constructors’ championship twice,” he says.
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“But I think it’s good for everyone. I feel like we have many of the right puzzle pieces together here in the team,” he praises. “This year was obviously a bit more difficult than the last two, but hopefully we recover and are able to win races and at least fight for victories.”
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