Oscar Piastri has shut down fears that F1 has lost its identity with the introduction of the new cars for the upcoming season.<\/p>\n
Various changes have been made to the cars, including boosting the electrical output of the power unit, which now matches the combustion engine.<\/p>\n
The cars made their on-track debut at the Barcelona shakedown last week as drivers got their first taste of the challengers.<\/p>\n
In the build-up to the season, it was theorised that the drivers would have to use different techniques than before to extract pace – including downshifting on long straights as part of the energy deployment management.<\/p>\n
Mercedes’ George Russell declared the downshifting strategy has become a reality, but asserted it does not feel abnormal.<\/p>\n
Despite the major change, Piastri insisted the cars still feel like F1 machines.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s lost its identity at all,\u201d Piastri told media including RacingNews365.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there are going to be some things to get used to.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in terms of some of the fears that maybe we had before we got on track, I think a significant majority of those have been alleviated now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not to say that there aren\u2019t things that could be improved still.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in terms of lift and coast and stuff like that, we were all doing it before anyway – just for different reasons most likely.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe not necessarily in qualifying, that\u2019s maybe going to look the most different, if I was to guess right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Piastri added that watching the cars in person will remain as spectacular as before.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly what that\u2019s going to look like, and it\u2019s probably going to change from circuit to circuit as we get used to how these engines work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they\u2019re still going to be incredibly quick machines. Sitting in the grandstands, watching live at the track, they\u2019re going to be just as impressive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be some differences, but I think fundamentally, they are still the fastest cars in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri has shut down fears that F1 has lost its identity with the introduction of the new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,827,817,830,828,831,829,826,813,816,823,825,824,822,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-461727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-f1-calendar","13":"tag-f1-live","14":"tag-f1-results","15":"tag-f1-standings","16":"tag-ferrari","17":"tag-formula-1","18":"tag-formula1","19":"tag-lewis-hamilton","20":"tag-max-verstappen","21":"tag-motorsport","22":"tag-racing","23":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}