McLaren boss Andrea Stella has explained that Oscar Piastri’s recent Formula 1 struggles are down to racing on low-grip circuits, describing them as a “learning process”.
The Australian has once again failed to match the pace of team-mate Lando Norris over the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, qualifying fourth and three tenths off the Brit, who took pole.
Piastri described his latest slump as “quite weird,” having languished in Norris’ shadow at both the United States and Mexico City Grands Prix in the past month.
It has enabled Norris to overhaul his points deficit to Piastri, his Sprint victory – coupled with his team-mate’s DNF – seeing him now lead by nine points.
Speaking to media including Motorsport Week after qualifying, Stella provided his own theory as to why Piastri has been able to match Norris across recent races.
“Today, if anything, the conditions saw much less grip on track compared to yesterday,” the Italian said,.
“Some of the techniques required to drive the car fast, they resemble a bit the techniques that were required in Austin and Mexico, so like Oscar is sort of learning this technique, embedding this technique, but it may take a bit more time to fully exploit them in a natural way – especially when, in conditions like today, you have in addition the fact that at every corner you don’t know exactly how much grip you’re going to find because of the wind, and this caught up even Lando in the first attempt in Q3.”
Stella added: “I think for Lando in this regime of low grip it’s just a little more natural to do the things that are normal for him to do and actually produce some lap time.
“For some reasons in the last three events we have had just low-grip conditions. You just have to kind of get the car to do what you want while the car is sliding.
“For Oscar himself this is a little bit of a learning process, but we know that Oscar learns at the speed of light and I’m expecting that tomorrow we will have a very strong race by Oscar.”
‘Weird, weird conditions’ behind late McLaren arrival at Piastri issue
When asked the reason for McLaren coming to this conclusion late, and therefore leaving Piastri floundering, Stella explained that the characteristics of the tyres across the previous two races have been a departure from the usual reality.
“Not only he’s never encountered this sustained sequence of similar conditions,” he said, “it’s quite anomalous that you have the tyres and the grip behaving like we have had in the last three events – not day one here in Brazil, but certainly day two, where just there’s not much grip, like you really need to get the car to slide and sort of manage your handling while the car is sliding. It’s weird, weird conditions.
“At the same time, the sport is so competitive that the difference is in the last one percent. And even if we say, ‘oh Oscar has been here in Brazil’, but it’s the third time he drives in Brazil, and every year the conditions are subtly different.”
Stella also pointed to Norris’ own struggles with his new car’s behaviour earlier in the season, when Piastri had the upper hand.
Stella cited Norris’ own problems with the MCL39 earlier in the season, when Piastri was seemingly suffering no issues. “If we think Lando, it took time for him to adapt to how the MCL39 was behaving,” he said.
“We were talking even with you and some of your questions at the start of the season about the understanding what the front tyres were doing, where was the limit of the grip, understanding when the car was flicking to oversteer.
“It took quite a bit of time and quite a lot of work with Lando, and when Lando was having this lack of feeling with the car, it was him now on the back foot. It’s so marginal.”
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