Oscar Piastri is confident that McLaren will narrow its current performance gap to Mercedes at this weekend’s Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix, despite what appears to be a “pessimistic” outlook for the Woking-based squad.
The reigning World Champions were given a rude awakening in the opening round in Melbourne last week, with Lando Norris fifth, nearly a full minute behind race-winner George Russell.
Piastri’s race was over before it began, as a torque spike on his installation lap sent him spinning into the barriers at the Albert Park Circuit destroying the home fans’ hopes of glory.
McLaren were already aware of the problems it faced in pre-season testing, as it also appeared to be slower than Ferrari and Red Bull, with weaker long-race to add to the mix.
With Piastri making a quick exit from the circuit last week, he observed his teammate fight off the advances of Max Verstappen, who had come all the way from 20th on the grid.
Ahead of this weekend’s second round in Shanghai, Piastri was asked if he was surprised to see Norris finish that far behind the Mercedes duo of Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
“Yes and no,” he told media including Motorsport Week. “The race was chaos for the first 10 laps and a very different kind of racing to what we’ve ever had in F1.
“[It was] very different from your kind of traditional way of racing. Once everyone settled down, it looked more similar to what we’ve seen previously.
“The gap to Mercedes, we still had a lot of things we wanted to try and work out in the race, not optimising things as much as we could have, or probably should have.
“It may paint a slightly pessimistic picture but we’re under no illusion that Mercedes are incredibly strong and we’ve got time to find.”
Oscar Piastri confident of ‘getting closer than what we did in Melbourne’
Piastri was still realistic in his ambitions of defeating Mercedes over a race, with its pace over a whole Grand Prix still significantly down on the Silver Arrows, but was confident that it can narrow the advantage.
“Hopefully, we can get closer,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be in the fight to beat them over a race distance.
“But I think we can get a lot closer than what we did in Melbourne.”
Piastri took victory Shanghai last year, to kickstart his eventually unsuccessful championship challenge. If he makes it onto the podium in either the Sprint or full Grand Prix, then he can probably feel mightily pleased with his weekend’s work.
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