Oscar Piastri will hope to be the driver who ends Max Verstappen’s reign as Formula 1 world champion. Theoretically, Piastri could contend for the title as early as this year.
After all, McLaren will head to the season-opening Australian Grand Prix as the defending constructors’ champions. They had the best car over the 2024 campaign as a whole.
And with very few changes to the regulations over the winter, the Woking outfit might well retain that advantage. Equally, the small gap to Ferrari and Red Bull behind means their lead isn’t safe.
Piastri finished fourth last year, 145 points behind Verstappen. He briefly looked like a dark horse after a scintillating run of mid-season form.
Across an eight-race span between Austria and Singapore, Piastri scored six podiums. He also landed his first two Grand Prix victories in Hungary and Azerbaijan.
But the Australian fell away over the final two triple-headers. He was classified seventh or lower in four of the last six events, opening up the margin.
Oscar Piastri not yet guiding McLaren engineers on car design
It’s easy to overlook Piastri’s inexperience given his elite-level talent. He’s competing with the best drivers on the grid, and so he’s judged by those standards, even when he’s only been in F1 for two years.
Piastri has been accumulating knowledge on the team’s processes and their car since his 2023 debut. But speaking to Motorsport-Total, he says there haven’t been any marked changes in his internal role.
And he’s not yet in a position to guide McLaren’s engineers on the design of their car. At this stage of his career, he feels that would be an overstep.
- READ MORE: McLaren driver Oscar Piastri’s life outside F1 from height to girlfriend
“I would say [there hasn’t been a change in] my demeanour or in the way I work with the team. Maybe I know a little bit more about what I want from the team or the car, but I think on the whole it’s very, very similar [to 2023].
“I’m certainly not telling the aerodynamicists in my second year how to design the car and so on.”
Piastri must improve in qualifying this year to mount a serious title bid. He didn’t manage a single pole position last year, while teammate Lando Norris took eight, and he lost the overall qualifying battle 21-3.
How Max Verstappen spotted one vital thing Red Bull’s engineers had missed
Verstappen has won each of the last four championships, crushing the competition in 2022 and 2023 in particular. In fact, either the Dutchman or Lewis Hamilton has taken every title since 2016.
The Red Bull driver has been dominant because of his supreme all-round package. Verstappen identified the ‘problem’ with his 2024 car in the data, spotting something his engineers had missed.
At that point, the 27-year-old told his team that the necessary changes were ‘clear’. Unlike Piastri, he’s comfortable issuing instructions to the designers.
Indeed, having listened to his feedback, Red Bull have abandoned an ‘extreme’ philosophy for 2025. That may make Verstappen’s car more predictable, creating the platform for a successful title defence.
Leave feedback about this