McLaren boss Andrea Stella has contended that Oscar Piastri‘s struggle on low-grip circuits was behind his difficult weekend at Formula 1‘s United States Grand Prix.
Piastri admitted to not being at ease inside his McLaren as his title bid endured a setback in Austin with a run to fifth marking his third straight race without a podium.
Lando Norris held the upper hand as soon as the cars hit the track in the only opening practice, a three-tenth gap between the two that would remain over a single lap.
But while he avoided losing ground to Norris in the Sprint Race as a collision at the start wiped out the McLaren duo, Piastri began the main event down in sixth place.
The Australian didn’t prove to be more competitive in race trim as he wound up 21 seconds behind Norris, who slashed his team-mate’s lead to 14 points with second.
Stella has revealed that McLaren would be launching a thorough review to determine whether a suboptimal set-up direction on Piastri’s car had hindered his weekend.
“This is certainly one of the most important points that we need to review,” Stella told media including Motorsport Week, regarding Piastri’s troubles.
“Oscar, in qualifying and in the race, he seemed to have a couple of tenths that he was not able to fully realise and that possibly was available in the car.
“We are actually now checking that we are completely happy with the set-up of the car, the set-up of the floor, that everything is as intended from a car point of view.”
However, Stella also pinpointed that McLaren has observed that Piastri tends to be less competitive relative to his usual level when the grip available is at a minimum.
“At the same time we’ll be looking at the driving,” the Italian continued.
“I think we know with Oscar that when the conditions are such that we have low grip, you really need to challenge the car, lean on the understeer, oversteer, locking, this is an area of his driving that has an opportunity to improve.”
Why Piastri couldn’t make usual weekend progress
Stella suspects this held an overriding relation on Piastri being unable to make the usual progress he does through a race weekend to be on the pace when it matters.
“Oscar has been a couple of tenths behind Lando, while in reality we are used to seeing an Oscar that catches and develops through the weekend,” he highlighted.
“So if anything, this is what has been missing so far.
“But it’s been a bit of an untidy event with missing the Sprint and for Oscar that needed to find some confidence, pushing the car when you have this low level of grip, the bumps, hot temperature and also very windy. So you do have to get in tune with your car to understand how much you can push.
“There was an interesting comment by Oscar echoed by Lando – they said, ‘today the car needs to be driven at the limit of locking the four tyres’.
“Like, if you just drive too gentle because you can’t cope with a wind gust or you just want to have a prudent approach to driving, you’re not going to generate lap time.
“So you sort of have to lean onto the limit. And if you lean onto the limit, you need to have a certain rhythm and a certain confidence.
“So if anything, this is the aspect that is missing on Oscar’s side, but when it’s so tight, then from a positional point of view, a couple of tenths may cost five positions on the grid.
“So I think we see a little bit of rhythm for Oscar, but also we see the implications of how tight the field is at this stage of the season.”
McLaren backs Piastri to overcome weakness
But as F1 prepares to race on another low-grip track with the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico, Stella harbours no doubt Piastri will overcome his limitation.
“In Oscar’s standards, he will improve pretty fast,” he asserted.
“I think today we got quite a lot of information that adds to the information we got yesterday.
“I think already this morning we had some conversations with Oscar as to what we can do to extract more.
“So I think this is just data to learn and Oscar will learn pretty soon.”
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