Oscar Piastri believes the work he did over the winter on qualifying has been crucial to his form this season after he took the lead in the Drivers’ Championship.

The Australian is the only multi-race winner this season, and after securing his third victory of the year in Saudi Arabia, he has moved to the top of the title standings for the first time in his career.

Oscar Piastri speaks of winter progress in quai skill

Piastri began the season perhaps half a step behind Lando Norris, whose win and podium in the first two races made him the title favourite.

Since then, though, the Australian has been in excellent form, winning two of the three Grands Prix and finishing on the podium in the other.

But if there is one area that Piastri, still only in his third season, thinks he has most improved, it is his qualifying with the 24-year-old having been on pole twice this year.

“I think the hard work we’ve been putting in definitely has been making a difference,” he said. “I think I’ve felt comfortable in qualifying and it felt like I’ve taken a bit of a step up.

“I think last year it wasn’t much that I often missed out by. But this year, I’ve had a couple qualifyings just on the wrong side of that gap still, but also more qualifyings on the right side of that gap now.

“So it’s been a lot of hard work in a lot of different areas, trying to get those last few hundreds of a second, and I think it has been paying off.”

McLaren have been one of the few teams insisting there is no number one driver, meaning that, as the Australian confirmed, quality is key to Piastri and Norris’s win chances.

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“I mean, qualifying is incredibly important,” Piastri said.

“Regardless of the kind of intra-team dynamics and pit stop preferences and whatever that causes, just the power of clean air is so important. So I think, regardless of that, you always want to be qualifying at the front.

“But with two drivers in the same car, I think with very similar pace, whenever you can be ahead, it’s a pretty major advantage, so it is going to be important to have good qualifying – but we’ve seen in the past that it’s not always everything. There are other areas where you can make up the difference if you do a good enough job.”

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