Piastri on biggest area for improvement: 'Not as much as I hoped'
F1 News
- Corwin Kunst
Oscar Piastri took his first Grand Prix victory in Formula 1 this year, thanks in part to the great progress he made with his tyre management. For 2025, the McLaren driver is hoping to make big strides in terms of pure speed over one lap, as he feels there is still room for improvement there. In addition, Piastri addressed the much-discussed papaya rules, which he said came up more often than necessary.
"[My] qualifying maybe hasn't really improved as much as I would have hoped," Piastri told Speedcafe. "But I think this year, I feel like there's been good moments in every criteria that I need as a driver. It's just been not putting them together often enough. So I think if I can tie them all up, I felt like last season, I was still missing some tools, so to speak, whereas this year, I feel like I have all the tools. It's just using them all together more consistently, and hopefully, that will bring me some more success."
Although Piastri has never been on pole position in Formula 1, he came close several times. This year, for instance, he got to start from the second row of the grid a couple of times: in Imola, Monaco, Hungary, Monza, Baku and Abu Dhabi.
Papaya rules was "made a lot bigger than it was"
Much has been said and written about the so-called papaya rules, the team orders at McLaren, in 2024. In practice, however, according to Piastri, they only happened once: during the sprint race in Brazil. According to Piastri, the whole issue was made bigger from the outside than it was internally within the team.
"Yes, there was a lot more talk externally than there was internally," he explains. "Of course, we discussed a lot, but we had to kind of set the rules and the boundaries. But, like you said, the only time it really came into fruition was in Brazil in the sprint race."
Piastri continued: "Like I said, that one instance, really, and there were a lot of questions about, 'Would I help, would I not help?' And for me, it was obvious from the start that I would. And I think after Brazil, yes, the championship then also became much tougher for Lando, but I think it reduced a lot of the noise when I actually let him through."
This article was written in collaboration with Olly Darcy
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