Oscar Piastri suggests McLaren used Red Bull’s most effective trick against them to win the Spanish Grand Prix

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri achieved his fifth victory of the season at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Everyone was interested to see if McLaren were going to be impacted by the new technical directive introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix to reduce the flexibility of each car’s front wing.

Team principal Andrea Stella frequently played down the importance of the rule change and he was right not to be worried.

Oscar Piastri achieved another pole position and had the biggest margin of the season to the next car which just happened to be his teammate Lando Norris.

The Australian appeared to have the race under control from start to finish and even a late safety car didn’t slow down his progress.

Nico Rosberg suggested Piastri had solved his Achilles’ heel in the process and when asked why McLaren were so quick, he pointed to a trick Red Bull and Max Verstappen have relied on all season to challenge the Woking-based outfit.

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Oscar Piastri lauds McLaren’s improvement after achieving Spanish Grand Prix victory

Piastri and Norris were speaking on McLaren’s Instagram account after the race and the drivers’ championship leader explained: “Great weekend. It’s been pretty spotless, so thanks to the team for a great car, think we made some really good steps from Friday to Saturday, and the car’s been mega ever since.

“So, thanks to the team. [We] executed the race very well, stuck to our guns when we needed to.

“A couple of rule changes, took them in our stride, so yeah, it’s been a great weekend overall and another one-two for the team and I can’t thank you enough, so cheers!”

Norris was then handed the microphone and when he revealed he didn’t hear a word Piastri said, the Australian followed up with, ‘I basically said the team were a bunch of legends.’

Norris continued: “Another very positive weekend for us here.

“Another one-two in quali, another one-two in the race. Of course, we’ll start by saying and probably end by saying a big thank you for all of the hard work.

“A lot of stuff thrown at us, TDs [technical directives], and all of this stuff, and yet we still push through and we have one of our best results.

“So, thank you very much. Let’s keep pushing, let’s keep working hard. We want to still do this every weekend. But again, we know our competition is very close.”

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Christian Horner explains the importance of Red Bull’s improvement over an F1 race weekend

So often this season, Red Bull have looked off the pace at the start of a race weekend only for Verstappen to suddenly be in contention for pole position.

On the other hand, McLaren have typically looked like the team to beat during every practice session and have almost been caught off-guard by Red Bull’s improvement.

Horner was speaking after qualifying for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix when Verstappen surprisingly took pole position and said: “Coming into quali off the back of FP3 it was all about who was going to be third and then suddenly in Q1 Max went quickest.

“To get that pole, our second in the last three races is phenomenal and really rewarding.

“It was a wonderful performance by Max and the team. The set-up changes we made definitely helped, and it gave Max a car he could attack with, we still expected to see a margin to the other cars but it seemed to disappear this evening and Max set a track record out there.”

McLaren will be an even more difficult team to beat if they’ve now found a way to unlock more potential across a race weekend.

Verstappen is now 49 points behind Piastri and while it’s still too early to write him off, McLaren will be growing increasingly confident that they can wrap up both championships this year.