What a difference a year makes
A year ago, right on the Shanghai circuit, Oscar Piastri claimed his first career F1 pole position. 12 months later, the McLaren driver has to settle for fifth on the grid, welcomed with satisfaction because it is probably the best result that could be hoped for in the papaya garage, even if the challenge to Ferrari – at least over a single lap – remains open. “I think what we’ve seen this weekend is quite representative of our value – Piastri explained, without getting his hopes up – we were a bit closer [to Mercedes], but we’re still half a second away, so it’s not like we’re really in contention with them at the moment. We have quite a few people to battle with, I think”.
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Power unit to exploit
In the papaya camp, the good news is a growth in the understanding of the Mercedes power unit: “To be optimistic, I think we have a better understanding of what we want from the power unit, how to implement it, and we are doing a better job from that point of view. I feel like I come out of every qualifying session at the moment thinking we’ve done a great job of maximizing the power unit, then we come back and find there was still quite a bit of margin we hadn’t noticed. I think today we probably did a better job in that sense – Piastri underlined – but unfortunately, we can’t make much progress at the moment“. For those, we will have to wait for the arrival of the “significant updates” promised by Andrea Stella.
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Appeal to the team
And on this very subject, Piastri let slip a joke that sounds a lot like a wish: “Let’s wait and see. Hopefully we’ll have updates like the ones in 2023 – the Australian joked, recalling when the Woking team jumped – starting from the Austrian GP – among the best teams on the grid after starting the championship in last place – but at the moment it’s hard to say“.
