Oscar Piastri has revealed the detailed lessons McLaren has taken following its double DNS at the Chinese Grand Prix as it looks to turn around its failing Formula 1 title defence.
The gulf between McLaren and pacesetters Mercedes and Ferrari became wider in Shanghai, as the team suffered a disastrous weekend.
Piastri could only manage sixth in Chinese GP sprint race, while his race on Sunday ended on the grid following an electrical issue with his MCL40.
Teammate Lando Norris, incredibly, then suffered the same fate, as his car suffered a separate electrical issue on the grid.
Both failures were related to the Mercedes power unit, Piastri confirming the team is still learning the intricacies of the new engine.
“I think they’re just incredibly complex, and there’s so many rules on the power units that you sometimes change one thing and it has a very unintended consequence somewhere else,” he said to media, including Motorsport Week.
“At a circuit like this, it’s very harvest-rich, so you don’t really have a problem with super-clipping or needing to lift and coast, but you’ve got other problems, because you can’t harvest as much as you want everywhere and there’s nothing you can do about that as a driver.
“I think we’re learning that the difficult part is, even if there’s something that we know that we want to do differently, we can’t do anything, because it has to be programmed in or there has to be a code change, so it’s complex.”
Oscar Piastri reveals progress in the face of adversity
Despite the issues in the opening races, Piastri is hopeful of that progress is being made.
However, the Australian was realistic about the reigning constructors’ champions chances of catching the frontrunners in the short term.
“I think it’s been encouraging from some angle,” he added. “I think we’ve done a better job of optimising the power unit; I think we’ve got more out of things on that side. But I think the gap has reduced a little bit, but it’s still big.
“Whilst we’ve understood some areas, we’ve also understood we’ve got a lot of work to do in others.”
Piastri is joining his teammate in putting on a brave face in the face of adversity, citing progress being made behind the scenes.
McLaren has a proven history of developing its way out of trouble, but with a car and power unit not fully optimised, no overnight fixes exist to remedy a difficult situation.
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