Oscar Piastri: F1 drivers need to find things in data we've never looked for before in qualifying

Oscar Piastri says Formula 1 drivers must focus on “not obvious” data points to maximise their qualifying laps with the new cars, as he explained how they require an entirely different approach to reach peak performance.

The McLaren driver echoed the overall frustration of wrestling the new cars and rules in qualifying trim, when lifting off throttle and deploying energy at different parts of a lap, even if it means going slower, adds up to the fastest overall lap time.

The biggest complaint has been it denies or even punishes drivers who push flat-out in qualifying, one of the attractions for drivers’ and fans’ alike, meaning finding the ultimate performance from the new era of cars isn’t always possible over one lap.

Piastri, who qualified fifth in Australia and fifth in both the sprint and grand prix in China plus third in Japan, went into detail on how drivers must study the data differently compared to previous ruleset in F1 as well as working with his engineers using new methods.

“It's been a lot of energy, I think mainly because you're looking in such unexpected areas,” Piastri explained about adjusting to the new rules.

“We're working out the optimal points of when we should get to full throttle starting a qualifying lap, which we've never had to worry about before. How you get back on the throttle in a certain corner sequence and depending on the speed of that corner, the battery and the power unit behaves differently here [one corner] to how it does here [another corner]. You're trying to work out all those things which we've never had to do before.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Artur Widak / NurPhoto via Getty Images

“They're not obvious things you look for. For us, we're going to try and brake a bit later here or all the normal things a driver would do. It's taxing because it's not like just pushing a car to the limit, feeling the tyres or something like that where it's almost instantaneous the feedback you get and it's a very physical sense.

“All this stuff you have to trial and error it to know if you're doing it right or not. It's been tough and a lot of energy spent on that, but that's pretty much the bulk of the lap time at the moment.”

While the Australian would prefer to be able to push flat-out in qualifying, he accepts the new approach is the only way to be successful in qualifying.

However, with rule tweaks installed in time for the Miami Grand Prix next weekend, which sees the energy harvesting limit dropped from eight to seven megajoules, Piastri hopes it can go some way to resolving the issue.

Less energy harvesting will mean the 2026 cars will be slower, but it reduces the need for both lift-and-coast and super clipping. But the key gain from it is that it should help to make qualifying more on the limit.

“Hopefully with these tweaks it means we don't have to focus so much on that kind of stuff,” Piastri concluded.