With a 16-point lead in the World Championship after six races, Oscar Piastri is staking his claim for his maiden F1 title in F1 2025.

With four wins from six races, Piastri’s lead over McLaren teammate Lando Norris is up to 16 points and 32 points over Max Verstappen.

Oscar Piastri’s work with McLaren engineers revealed

Now in his third year in Formula 1, Piastri has stepped forward to lead McLaren’s title charge as the Woking-based squad aims to topple Max Verstappen from the perch he has occupied since the 2021 season.

While an error in Australia cost Piastri a likely podium as he followed Norris off track when the rain hit, Piastri has otherwise been largely faultless and bounced back from his Melbourne disappointment to win in China.

Finishing third in Japan, Norris has since won the last three races and becomes the first McLaren driver to win three races in a row since Mika Hakkinen in 1997/98.

With the first quarter of the season seeing Piastri enjoy the upper hand in consistency over Norris, it’s also become evident that the Australian has addressed some of the inconsistent race pace issues he had throughout his first season and, to a lesser extent, during 2024.

Piastri’s experience with the requirements of the Pirelli tyres has obviously increased during his time in F1, and there has been no evidence of the same drop-off or inconsistent performance that would occasionally be the story of his races.

But how much of that is down to the Australian and how much is down to the strengths of the McLaren MCL39? After all, the car’s ability to maintain cooler tyre temperatures has been highlighted by rival teams as being the key advantage McLaren has over the rest of the field this season.

McLaren boss Andrea Stella has pointed to Piastri being the bigger factor in this equation, saying that the improvements in the car’s strengths are only made possible by what the driver can exploit.

“Looking at the way Oscar is mastering and managing tyre degradation at the moment, [there is] no way that this improvement would come simply from the car,” he told media, including PlanetF1.com, after Piastri’s assured victory in Miami.

“The only way to exploit the improvements we have made with the car, they take place only when the driver somehow understands what to do with the tyres and with the car.

“This has happened, not by chance or not because Oscar is getting a little older, this is because there’s been a lot of work done by the engineers in terms of understanding the driving style, how you damage the tyres, and how you can prevent damaging the tyres.

“This is very different from when you have graining; when you have graining at the front, graining at the rear, overheating of the front, overheating at the rear, it’s not like you improve the way you master the tyres in a way that is good for all seasons.

“There are many ways in which you need to be able to do so.

“I think this is a testament to the quality of the work done by Oscar and the team around him.”

Key F1 2025 stats

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

Having complimented Piastri on the step forward he’s made on that front, Stella made a point of highlighting how Norris, too, can boast of similar abilities to keep the tyres alive.

“When I say so, like even from Lando’s point of view, I think we have seen that there are definitely improvements and, if anything, in the final stint on the hard tyre, I could see that, at times, Lando was, if anything, even a little faster than Oscar,” he said.

“For Lando, there was just too much time lost in the two situations with Verstappen to have what would have been an interesting situation between our two drivers, but I’m sure it will come in future races.”

While Norris did close in on Piastri in the closing stages of the race at the Miami Autodrome, the Australian always looked in complete control of the situation as the laps ticked by. In the early stages, Piastri had had to duel hard with Verstappen to take the lead of the race, which he managed on Lap 14 after almost 10 laps of dicing.

Norris was able to get by quicker but was less assured than Piastri in his approach, costing himself time as he had to release Verstappen back past after going off track in his pass. But Norris’ comparative lack of time stuck behind Piastri could, theoretically, have saved his tyres for a little longer, as Stella addressed.

“I think, realistically, the tyres will have suffered by following Max so closely,” he said of Piastri.

“I don’t know to what extent but, at the same time, I think once you get the benefit of free air and leading the race, you get quite a bit of benefit. So we don’t know exactly how much.

“In what we saw after having overtaken Max, there was a bit of penalty because of having stayed behind Max. But then the benefit of leading the race, in terms of higher exploitation so I’m not sure, from a technical point of view, how these two factors combine to each other but, clearly, I think after a few laps in the race, Oscar could benefit by quite a bit of an advantage compared to Max and, therefore, was relatively easy to stay within [DRS].

“It was not one of those cases in which you needed to use your tyres to the limit to be able to stay there and gain the DRS. It was relatively easy to gain the DRS.

“At this track, the DRS sections are so long that then you have a benefit from an overtaking point of view.

“Even Saudi is relatively easy to overtake but, here, overtaking is 30 to 40 per cent easier when you take the lap time delta required to overtake another car, so you definitely have to lean less on the tyres to be able to complete the overtaking.”

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