McLaren opens up about secrets of Oscar Piastri's speed

In getting faster, the F1 championship leader has opened up a virtuous circle of improvement that enables him to go even quicker – and he has the right support network, too

“Trying to find little bits everywhere” was how Oscar Piastri described the marginal-gains approach he feels has boosted him to four grand prix wins this season and the championship lead.

“It’s quite a different feeling when you win a race because you feel like you’ve just gotten by or had good circumstances,” he said in the FIA press conference ahead of the Imola GP. “But to now be winning because we have an incredibly quick car and I feel like I’m driving well, that’s very satisfying.”

McLaren Formula 1 team principal Andrea Stella, who has worked with the likes of Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso as a race engineer, knows what greatness looks like and was typically detailed when asked what Piastri had done to elevate himself to the next level this season.

“Well, I think the most important improvement, if anything, is that Oscar has become a faster driver,” said Stella.

“I think when you’re a faster driver, then you have more opportunity to process, more time to process, more bandwidth to process things. This is true when you are in the car, and this is also true when you are outside the car – because, like, the speed is there, let's process all the other marginal gains that will then, at the end of the weekend, constitute the performance you need to have the kind of results he's having at the moment.”

Piastri had talked about using his time more intelligently, and identifying particular areas of improvement rather than, say, spend more hours in the simulator.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

“It’s just been about how you do things more efficiently,” he said. “How you take the next step up in your preparation.

“Experience naturally helps. Some of the things that you have to concentrate on become more natural, so you’re constantly learning – and that experience definitely helps.

“But the preparation has mostly been the same. We've just been trying to find those little bits in every column. There hasn't been one big change – just trying to find little bits everywhere.”

Team insiders say that while much of the commentary surrounding Piastri has focused on him needing to sharpen up on qualifying performance and tyre management during his first two seasons, to express this in such binary terms was doing Oscar a disservice. They say he was operating at a very high level when he arrived at McLaren, and that the disparities between him and team-mate Lando Norris in terms of one-lap pace and tyre-whispering were very small.

They also say he has a remarkable ability to assess a lap in terms of where he can improve and how much time could be found where – before looking at the data to prove it out. Being at a different part of his evolutionary curve as a young driver has also helped him to adapt quickly to some of the eccentricities of the cars he has driven.

But he hasn’t done it on his own. Stella also signalled the influence of Piastri’s ‘support network’ – not just the engineers he works with, but the gritty former F1 driver who superintends his business affairs and is always on hand with sage advice.

“Over the winter, there's been a very specific amount of work that has paid attention to different areas, it’s been quite holistic,” said Stella.

“And while Oscar is definitely the main one to praise for these developments, I would like to mention the team around Oscar – his engineers and all the support from the factory, with all the analysis. And even the [management] team, Mark Webber who works with Oscar, is definitely a great source of thoughts, insight, and identification of opportunities.

“So there's quite a lot of work behind this progress but, ultimately, hats off to Oscar that he’s been able to capitalise.”