From challenging Sauber to Red Bull: 'Pressure taken off immediately'
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- Ludo van Denderen
Driving somewhere hopeless at the back of Formula 1 the grid, competing in the crowded midfield battle and then eventually fighting for wins. For many young drivers, that is the logical trajectory in Formula 1, a process that often takes years. Oscar Piastri also went through all these stages, but in the space of just a year and a half. In such a short time, the Australian and his McLaren team have managed to take important steps forward.
No quiet 'instalation' period, then, but almost immediately in the spotlight, with the accompanying pressure. Piastri had to begin competing for winning Grands Prix soon, but he does not consider that a problem. "It's definitely not been a hindrance being at the front," the Australian laughed when talking with GPblog. "I think for me being at the back, I would have very happily have come into a team that was straight at the front straight away. But I think it did help maybe a little bit with the expectation coming in."
"There's still a lot of expectation and when you go up against Lando [Norris], it's never an easy comparison. It maybe took a little bit of pressure off achieving big results straight away. I think now being right at the front, I feel like I'm as ready as I can be. Of course, I'm still learning things along the way. It's been good in some ways to experience both ends of the grid."
Piastri praises McLaren
No one ever doubted Piastri's qualities, however, his McLaren was simply not fast enough in the first weeks of '23. As is thus well known, the British team put their worse start behind them extremely quickly, and now, they have the fastest car on the F1 grid. Piastri deeply admires how this development process began. "One of the big eye openers was how motivated the team was to get out of the form that we had at the start of last year and get back to where we are now."
"To be honest, I don't think anyone really expected it. So it's been cool to see both ends. I definitely prefer this end of the grid. But it's just special to be able to fight [for wins]," Piastri concluded.
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