McLaren boss Andrea Stella has contended that Oscar Piastri‘s dominant drive at the Spanish Grand Prix exemplified the progress he has made in Formula 1 in 2025.
Piastri consolidated his advantage in the championship in Barcelona as he converted a sublime pole position lap to lead a McLaren 1-2 over team-mate Lando Norris.
The Australian aced the start to be unopposed on the prolonged 700-metre run to Turn 1 to maintain a lead that he never looked like ceding with a measured showing.
Even when the Safety Car was deployed late on to set up a grandstand ending, Piastri was unfazed as he nailed the restart to avoid the chaos that ensued behind him.
Having endured a minor dip the previous weekend in Monaco, Piastri credited his emphatic return to the top step to meticulous work with his team behind the scenes.
Asked whether it was his strongest weekend in F1 to date, Piastri answered: “It’s definitely up there. I don’t know if it’s the best one, but certainly it’s been a strong one.
“You know, it’s pretty hard to complain with the results we’ve had this weekend.
“And I think more so than that, just the effort that’s gone in, and analysing some of the things from last week that we could have done better.
“I think we turned it around very nicely and got back to the form we wanted to be on. And, yeah, that’s what I’m very satisfied with this weekend. Definitely one of the strongest.”
McLaren hails Piastri development
Piastri’s exploits represented a dramatic contrast to his experience in Spain 12 months ago when he started down in 10th and trailed home 31 seconds behind Norris.
Like in China, the seven-time F1 race winner proved that he has now developed the understanding of how to manage his potent raw speed over a whole race distance.
And despite acknowledging that Norris losing out at the start to Max Verstappen thwarted the sister McLaren, Stella insisted that shouldn’t detract from Piastri’s race.
“You do have to use your tyres more,” Stella explained to media including Motorsport Week when asked whether being tucked up behind the Red Bull compromised Norris’ bid to beat his team-mate. “Because you are following, and when you are following, aerodynamics reduces, so you have to extract from the tyres what you lose from an aerodynamic point of view. Which could be easily like half a second, that you extract more from the tyres.
“So I think yes, more tyre consumption for Lando in the first stint. But overall, I have to say that the two drivers today were in a way quite surprisingly pretty much going in parallel throughout the entire race.
“And I think Oscar has done a really impressive job, considering that last year this was one of the most difficult races for him. So he’s gone a really long way forward in 12 months.”
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