McLaren Formula 1 boss Andrea Stella believes Oscar Piastri still made progress on his race management at the Japanese Grand Prix despite a challenging weekend.
Piastri endured a subdued outing last weekend as he qualified three places behind team-mate Lando Norris in sixth and dropped one position in the race to seventh.
The Australian ended up almost 18 seconds behind Norris, who was unable to beat the Ferraris to the podium, as a late mistake allowed George Russell to pass him.
Although he secured third place at the venue six months ago, Piastri struggled with degradation and classified 17s behind Norris despite being ahead as late as Lap 27.
But while Piastri was unable to replicate his podium finish from last term, Stella has hinted that the improved pace from McLaren’s rivals concealed his driver’s growth.
Asked about Piastri struggling to match Norris, Stella said: “I think with Oscar, I would prefer to look at how much of a difference we have improved compared to last year here in Suzuka.
“Like here in Suzuka, while Oscar qualified very strongly [he pipped Norris to a spot on the front row], he struggled a bit in the race. Definitely, much more than today.
“So, from that point, in a few races, because Japan was towards the end of the season, Oscar has gone a long way forward in terms of managing tyres in the race.”
Despite the evident improvement compared to his rookie F1 season, Stella acknowledged that Piastri is missing the marginal areas that will develop with experience.
“But obviously, when the degradation is so high, it’s, you know, it requires a lot of practice,” the Italian continued.
“It requires experience to make your degradation 5% better. And if you make it 5% better, you gain quite a bit of time.
“So, we have gone a long way forward. We are happy with this progress. And we’re now talking about incremental gains, which come with experience and development.”
Stella has suggested that Piastri’s time spent behind the turbulence emanating from Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin contributed to Russell being able to overtake him.
Prior to his last-lap pass, the Mercedes driver had been mounting a large charge on the Medium compound that saw him fail with a lunge on Piastri into the last chicane.
“I think the following was still a problem, but you lose so much more time because of tyre degradation that as soon as somebody has higher degradation, or a car with newer tyres meets a car with older tyres. You have such a pace difference, and then you can see people attacking at the hairpin, at the spoon,” he explained.
“So, it’s tyre degradation dominated over slipstream effect.”
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