Oscar Piastri explains why mental strength mattered more in 2025 title battle

Oscar Piastri has argued that mental training is possibly more important than physical training.

The McLaren driver found himself in the championship fight in his third Formula 1 season in 2025, and while reflecting on the intense year, he claimed that having mental strength was imperative.

"It's a really important part of it, and I think for me it's probably equally, if not even more, important than the physical training," the Australian driver explained during a fan Q&A session with Quad Lock.

"In an engineering sense, looking for 200ths of a second here, 200ths of a second here, to find a tenth in total. But if you're not in the right state of mind or able to get the most out of your potential, you can easily be leaving one of those tenths just on the table from your own performance.

"So, trying to get the most out of that is really important, and it covers a lot of different things. Identifying how tired you are is a really important thing."

Looking back at his debut in the championship in 2023 with McLaren, the 25-year-old revealed that he was mentally exhausted by the end of the season.

"And at the back end of my first season in F1, for example, I kind of thought there were a few things that weren't going that well. And by the time the season finished, I actually just stopped thinking about racing for a bit," he continued.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

"I was absolutely knackered from a mental point of view because I was trying to spend all my time thinking about, how do I find improvements here, how do I find improvements there?

"And sometimes, actually just taking a step back is important. So that's been something this year: I think where you spend your energy, which battles you fight, which ones you don't is important as well.

"Obviously, [2025] was a really high-pressure year for the whole season. And I think dealing with some of the difficulties that came my way was a really important thing to try to manage. And I think I tried to do the best job I could."

While he felt he had made a jump in mental strength in 2025, he admitted that there was still room for improvement.

"There's probably some improvements that I can make. In some ways, I can handle things better. Talk with the people around me about how we can reduce stress in the environment, and how you can just maximise your potential."