Oscar Piastri has revealed how McLaren strived to “keep perspective” amid the struggles the team experienced at the beginning of the previous Formula 1 season.
McLaren had been braced to endure a tough start to 2023 after admitting it had missed development targets on its MCL60 car and failed to score across the first two rounds.
However, the introduction of a phased mid-season upgrade package propelled McLaren into front-running contention, where it emerged as the closest threat to Red Bull.
Piastri capitalised on McLaren’s resurgence to land two podiums and a Sprint win in Qatar beyond the summer break to help the side clinch fourth place in the championship.
But despite the recognition that it would not require a sizeable step to move up the order, the Australian admits that McLaren’s upturn even eclipsed what had been anticipated.
“I’ve got complete confidence in [Andrea Stella, Team Principal], in Zak [Brown, CEO], in different parts of the business,” Piastri told Autosport.
“It’s exceeded everyone’s expectations of how quickly we’ve been able to turn things around.
“For me, the impressive thing was I felt there was a very good base with the race team at the races. And then when we needed to make changes, we did, and it’s worked.
“The upgrades were able to deliver everything we hoped, in some cases more than we expected in certain situations. I didn’t expect to be in this position so early in my time at McLaren.
“The numbers were as we expected, but we didn’t expect it to vault us up so far.
“Something we tried to keep in perspective at the start was, ‘Yes, we’re slow and near the back of the grid. But it’s not actually going to take that much to get towards the front’.”
Having accumulated more points than anyone bar Red Bull with its revamped car, McLaren has been tipped as the team best placed to challenge the reigning champions.
The British outfit’s hopes will be boosted by building upon a car concept that it understands, unlike Ferrari and Mercedes who are set to launch revised solutions.
And while he accepts that McLaren’s MCL38 challenger will be compared against its rivals’ cars, Piastri believes sustaining that upward trajectory is the most crucial thing.
“The biggest thing is to continue the momentum. If you stand still, you’re going backwards,” he added. “Of course, we don’t know what the other teams have around us.
“We’re happier than we were at this point 12 months ago with how things are looking. But until you’re on track with everyone else, you never quite know what it’s going to be like…
“The thing for us is, we still have pretty clear weaknesses [low-speed cornering performance] compared to our competitors. It’s just that we also have good strengths as well.
“How those are going to balance up against each other is always difficult even for us to know. Every team has some sort of fluctuation at every circuit apart from Red Bull [at] Singapore.”
