Oscar Piastri believes he now retains the attributes to mount a title bid in Formula 1 in 2025 having worked hard to address the weaknesses he pinpointed 12 months ago.
Piastri’s sophomore F1 campaign proved to be productive as he took his maiden wins to help McLaren secure the Constructors’ Championship for the first time since 1998.
But Piastri ended up 82 points behind team-mate Lando Norris, who capitalised on McLaren’s mid-season surge to become the team’s best hope against Max Verstappen.
That sizeable margin prompted McLaren to impose team orders at one stage, though it was to no avail as Verstappen retained the Drivers’ title with two rounds remaining.
Piastri admitted as the previous campaign drew to a close that he is eager to avoid being consigned to a support role again should McLaren be in contention in 2025.
With McLaren in a stronger position to begin the season contesting victories with the MCL39, Piastri is convinced he is also better prepared to have a shot at the main prize.
“It’s definitely a clean slate,” Piastri told media including Motorsport Week at McLaren’s shakedown event at Silverstone.
“Like I said, everyone is starting on zero again and I think last season towards the end it was natural that I still had the opportunities to go out and put my best foot forward.
“Yes, there was a couple of situations where I ended up helping out Lando, but there was some where he still helped out me. So it wasn’t as clear cut.
“But yeah, definitely we are starting on a clean slate and I do think that I can become World Champion this year.
“I feel like 12 months ago I was going into the season still with some weaknesses that I wasn’t particularly confident with. I think through last season I addressed them.
“It’s now just about addressing them every weekend and making sure that I’m putting my best foot forward every weekend and that is what is going to be the difference.
“So yeah, I’m confident. I think we’ve still got some things to work on and I’m definitely not the finished product, but I don’t think anyone necessarily is.
“And I think if we can work on some of the things that we’ve set out to do in this off-season then I’ll have a lot of tools to be able to try and make that happen.”
Piastri details main improvement required in 2025
Piastri has acknowledged that improving his execution over a single lap will be imperative to his prospects, having sustained a 20-4 drubbing to Norris in qualifying last season.
With Norris also logging eight pole positions to Piastri’s zero, the one-sided record tended to leave the latter McLaren with too much ground to make up during the races.
Piastri, though, has revealed that a chance to draw breath over the winter and review matters has exposed other areas that he is bidding to improve upon with his engineers.
“I said at the end of last season, qualifying is something I want to work on, but I think going through a lot of the details and things, it’s not just qualify better,” he added.
“There’s some specifics that if I can improve on those, it’ll make everything better. And then you get the confidence and everything kind of naturally helps itself.
“So there’s definitely some opportunities we’ve identified and I think if I can work on those, then hopefully those weaker weekends at some points from last season will disappear.
“And I think ultimately that’s going to be an important thing this season, is putting your best foot forward every weekend.
“Because there’s going to be weekends where you’re not the quickest, that’s going to be for sure. And it’s how you can still make the most of those weekends where you’re not on top.”
How Piastri is tackling remaining weaknesses
Piastri explained that he has been using McLaren’s simulator to iron out such flaws, but he conceded that there are some which can’t be rectified until he gets out on track.
Asked whether his shortcomings can be tackled on the simulator or require time in a real car, Piastri replied: “I would say both. Some of them you can work on in the sim.
“Obviously the sim is not going to be identical to the real car as much as we obviously aim and try to get it as realistic as possible.
“It’s never going to be exactly the same but you can still start to work on those things in the sim and build the right things.
“And I think the opportunities that I have are things that you can work on in the sim. I think there was a lot of strengths that I had last year as well.
“I think in the races in particular I had to fight for a lot of my finishes that I had last year and in a lot of cases had to improve from where I started.
“I think that side of things you can’t really work on in the sim.
“So I’m happy with a lot of the things I did last season, but some of those opportunities definitely we can already start working on now.”
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