Oscar Piastri told the ‘next thing’ he must do in 2025 to reach the same level as Lando Norris

Oscar Piastri continued to show why he is one of Formula 1’s top rising talents in 2024 with an impressive second season with McLaren.

The Aussie finished ninth in his debut year in 2023, putting in some brilliant performances in the second half of the season to grab two podiums and a Sprint race win in Qatar on his way to winning the Rookie of the Year award.

With McLaren heading into the 2024 campaign with one of the strongest packages on the grid, Piastri initially struggled to find his feet as it took him until the Monaco Grand Prix to score his first podium of the year.

The 23-year-old found his groove after that as he went on to secure two wins at the Hungarian Grand Prix and the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as well as eight podiums across the season to finish fourth in the standings.

Piastri displayed great speed and consistency throughout the season as he only finished outside the points once – after contact with Carlos Sainz in Miami forced him out of the points with a damaged front wing.

It’s perhaps easy to forget that the Aussie will be heading into his third season in F1 after how impressive he has been already since joining McLaren. But his engineer Tom Stallard says there are still things to improve.

Tom Stallard says Oscar Piastri must improve in qualifying to reach Lando Norris’ level

While Piastri finished fourth in the Drivers’ Championship, teammate Lando Norris also enjoyed his best finish in F1, finishing runner-up to Max Verstappen, 82 points ahead of the Aussie.

The Brit largely outperformed Piastri in 2024, and speaking on the Sky Sports F1 Podcast, while the Aussie has made improvements from his debut season, Stallard says he must improve in qualifying to get to Norris’ level.

“This time last year, when we looked at his results it was clear that, particularly the circuits where rear-tyre management was the challenge in the race, then he was generally found wanting and struggled to manage them in the best way.

“So we worked very hard through the winter and through the opening races to try and fix that and I think this year, he’s been in the races in a much, much better place and generally his tyre management certainly no longer looks like a weakness, it no longer looks like a problem, there’s still opportunities.

“The next thing we need to do with Oscar is take a small step in qualifying performances, because he’s generally been a little bit, one or two tenths, like normally on the same row as Lando.

“But there’s probably one or two tenths that we want to try and find into next year.”

What did the McLaren teammate head-to-head battle look like in 2024?

Looking at the statistics between Norris and Piastri in 2024, the former won the battle at McLaren by some distance.

Norris outqualified Piastri a staggering 20-4 in Grand Prix events, collecting eight pole positions along the way – becoming the fourth McLaren to achieve eight poles in a single season.

Norris had the better of Piastri in the races as well, winning the battle 16-8 and collecting four wins compared to the Aussie’s two.

Heading into 2025, Martin Brundle thinks Norris is the favourite for the title given McLaren have arguably the fastest car and the Brit is more comfortable fighting at the front. But Piastri has shown he is not shy about battling his teammate on track and will prove strong competition from the off next season.

Guenther Steiner thinks Piastri will be Norris’ biggest enemy in 2025 rather than Verstappen, with the 23-year-old certainly looking to get the better of his teammate when the scores are set to zero.