Oscar Piastri feels McLaren driver is now ‘exposed’ with F1 rivals able to take advantage

Oscar Piastri will hope to match his McLaren teammate Lando Norris and emerge as a Formula 1 title contender in 2025 after helping to lift the constructors’ championship.

The Woking crew secured their first teams’ title since 1998 last year as Norris and Piastri led McLaren back to the top of the Formula 1 grid. It took until the final race of the term to seal the crown with 666 points as Ferrari fell 14 shy of securing their first teams’ title since 2008.

Norris scored the baulk of McLaren’s points with 374 to also emerge as a drivers’ title threat for the first time in the Briton’s Formula 1 career. But Piastri was often a match for his more experienced teammate en route to taking 292 points for fourth place in the 2024 standings.

Oscar Piastri feels his weaknesses are ‘exposed’ as a frontrunning Formula 1 driver

Piastri even scored more points than any Formula 1 driver between the Monaco Grand Prix and the Singapore Grand Prix with 183 through the 11 rounds. In that time, the 23-year-old also secured two Grand Prix victories, four P2 finishes, one P3 result and P2 in an F1 Sprint.

Team orders overshadowed Piastri’s first Grand Prix win in Hungary after McLaren put Norris in the lead through pitting the 25-year-old first under pressure from Lewis Hamilton. But the story was all the Australian’s when Piastri ignored McLaren to win the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Now, having also won the F1 Sprint at the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix in his rookie season, Piastri believes he has ‘all the tools’ to fight for the drivers’ title in 2025. But fighting at the front of the F1 field has ‘exposed’ any weakness in his racecraft that his rivals can take advantage of.

READ MORE: F1 2024 teammate head-to-head battles including race, Sprint and qualifying

“Just putting it all together a bit more is, I think, what’s going to be needed,” Piastri has told Motorsport. “So, now that you’re at the front, you get exposed for anything that you can’t do perfectly more than what you would being a bit further back in the pack. But I feel like I have all the tools I need. I just need to be able to deploy them all the time.”

Oscar Piastri must improve in qualifying after losing 20-4 to Lando Norris in 2024

Through his rookie campaign in 2023, the major weakness in Piastri’s racecraft after having a year on the sidelines was his difficulty with keeping life in the Pirelli tyres through a stint. Yet the Australian made major progress with nursing his tyres in 2024 to be a Grand Prix winner.

No driver will likely ever be perfect at preserving the Pirelli rubber with F1 ordering the Italian company to produce tyres which degrade and have a tight operating window. But Piastri put to use his greater experience to deal with his tyres dropping off to win in Baku in September.

McLaren were worried that he would not be able to push the tyres as much as Piastri might have wanted. But, after producing a perfect divebomb on Charles Leclerc to pass the Ferrari driver for the lead in Baku, Piastri kept it together whilst his tyres fell away to win the race.

Ultimately, however, qualifying was Piastri’s major weakness in 2024 and an area where the McLaren ace must improve in 2025, despite believing he has ‘all the tools’ to fight for a title. Norris beat Piastri 20-4 in qualifying in 2024 and also took eight pole positions over the year.

Piastri is still yet to score a pole position in his Formula 1 career. Even though he secured P2 on the grid six times, he even had one of the worst F1 teammate qualifying margins in 2024. Norris was, on average, 0.447 seconds faster over one lap in qualifying than Piastri last year.