Oscar Piastri cut a very relaxed figure as he strolled into the room that housed our interview set-up at the McLaren Technology Centre. The Australian had arrived in town earlier in the week for a day in the simulator with his engineers. Now he was back for a content day \u2013 and we were one of his stops.<\/p>\n
As a baseline, Piastri’s<\/a> mood is always friendly and relaxed but that was tested last year when he saw his 34-point lead in the championship evaporate as his McLaren<\/a> team mate Lando Norris<\/a> fought back to win his maiden F1 title and become Formula 1’s 35th championship. The winter break \u2013 or summer break for him as he headed back to his native Australia \u2013 was very welcome.<\/p>\n On returning to the day job, Piastri looks like he’s had a full reset and is ready to go again. In reflecting on last year, in what was only his third F1 campaign, he’s been able to take plenty of positives \u2013 as well as lessons to make him a more potent force in 2026.<\/p>\n “For me, it was important to just have some time to chill out and probably not think about racing for a couple of weeks, which was nice,” says Piastri, who won seven Grands Prix last year. “The reflections come naturally on the previous season and I think when you take a step back from being in the thick of it, especially at the end of the season, it was nice to look back on all the positive moments that happened.<\/p>\n “Obviously, there was some tougher moments to look back on as well, but I think when you remove yourself from that fierce competition and you’ve got some time to look back on it afterwards, it’s always easier to see the positive moments, which was nice to reflect back on. And then it’s been focusing onto this year because it comes around very quick and obviously we’ve got a lot to learn for this year with a lot of new changes [to the rules]. So it was a nice balance of a bit of everything.”<\/p>\n For two-thirds of 2025, Piastri looked like he was on his way to becoming champion. He headed into the summer break on a run of 15 podiums in 16 events. But a run of six rounds without a podium, as a couple of mistakes crept in, put him on the backfoot and he ultimately lost too much ground to recover.<\/p>\n Elite athletes often say that you learn more from losing than winning \u2013 and you get the sense that rather than getting down about last year’s defeat, Piastri is focusing on the fact last year was a big step up in terms of performance relative to the previous campaign \u2013 and thus he’s still in the right trajectory to being a champion in the future. At just 24, he has time on his side.<\/p>\n “There’s definitely a lot of tough lessons you learn when things aren’t going the way you want,” he says. “I’m always someone that tries to take what I can from any situation, regardless of how good or bad it’s been.<\/p>\n “It was important to look back on, definitely and again there was a lot of positive moments and just positive attributes from last season that I really want to take into this season. Just the step up in my performance from 2024 to 2025 was really nice to see and be able to achieve.<\/p>\n “The kind of way we can go about trying to achieve that level of success again, we’ve kind of got a bit of a blueprint for it now. And while 2026 has got some very different key aspects you need to get right, I think the way of going about it and the way you can use your time and your energy is something that you can look back on the past for.”<\/p>\n Looking ahead to F1’s new season<\/p>\n