McLaren boss weighs in on Oscar Piastri concern and notable Lando Norris pattern

29 September 2023 , 20:54

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Oscar Piastri's race pace needs some work, but his first F1 season has still been excellent (Image: HOCH ZWEI/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

Andrea Stella moved to cool concerns over Oscar Piastri's race pace this season.

Overall, the 22-year-old rookie has had a stellar debut campaign in Formula 1. After enduring a difficult first part of the season for McLaren, the Aussie shone as soon as he got the upgrades that also pushed Lando Norris back towards the front of the grid.

He secured his best result last time out at the Japanese Grand Prix, finishing third to stand on an F1 podium for the first time. But that was after being overtaken by Norris who had started behind him on the grid.

Piastri was 17 seconds adrift of his team-mate by the end of that race and could not quite get the same pace out of his car. It was on-theme with the rest of the season, as the more experienced Brit has had the upper hand on Sundays.

But it is of no concern to McLaren chiefs, who have had nothing bad to say about Piastri all year. Team principal Stella feels it is only natural given the fact the Aussie is still learning at this level and knows that the talent is there to make the necessary improvements over time.

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The Italian said: "I think when it comes to race pace... it's not like you learn race pace and it's a set of skills that then you deploy for every race. Race pace in a race like Japan, with high degradation, the car bouncing a little bit in some places, high speed, low-speed management is kind of applicable to Japan, plus some general learning.

"But this doesn't mean that it was the same in Hungary or it was the same somewhere else. That's why it's a bit of a journey. It takes time, because every situation, presents its own characteristics.

"I'm sure Oscar will have learned things [from the Japan race]. And actually, I think towards the end it was already better than it was in the second stint. So it's just a systematic work of cashing in all the possible learnings. There's no one-off learning that is applicable to every situation.

"It's just a rookie element. But the first thing I would take is always the outright speed, which is what we saw in qualifying. Because when you have that, race pace and all these things are much easier to work on.

"It's not about finding the edge on a single lap in Suzuka like we saw. It's more difficult to sort of work together with your engineers – that's a gift."

Daniel Moxon