A theory debunking Oscar Piastri‘s woes in qualifying at recent races has explained the Australian’s struggle with particular tracks in the Formula 1 calendar.
F1 journalist Mark Hughes has broken down data explaining that Piastri is struggling on very low-grip tracks, which includes Austin and Mexico, and that he “simply didn’t adapt his driving to that [track] as well as [Lando] Norris“.
After the Mexican Grand Prix, where the Australian left one point shy of his teammate in the drivers’ championship, Piastri admitted that he needed to “drive differently“.
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Oscar Piastri looks on in the Drivers Press Conference. Getty
Hughes believes that instead, it’s the tyre dynamics that had been tripping up the 24-year-old, not the car or team bias.
Due to the McLaren teammates having vastly different driving styles, Piastri ended up being half a second slower than Norris.
Norris is said to be stronger at low-grip tracks and Piastri at high-grip tracks.
But the good news out of this for Australian fans is that of the final four races of the F1 season, all circuits but Vegas provide tracks where Piastri performs exceptionally well.
The final four races of the season are Brazil, Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, and the Australian will be looking to find his lost momentum to take back the championship lead.
During qualifying in Mexico, it was revealed that Piastri lost 0.25 seconds to the British driver going into turn one and 0.34 seconds in the final corner.
The Australian lost time to Norris due to his front tyres not being up to temperature and in the final corner, Piastri had moments of understeer in his entry.
After applying more lock as the power came in, he slightly overheated his rear tyre surface, leaving him to finish well behind his polesitter teammate in seventh.
Team principal Andrea Stella joined the discussion, saying that, “Our two drivers have always been separated by a few milliseconds in qualifying and by a few centimetres in the race.”
“So it’s unusual to see this distance on the grid and this distance in terms of lap time.”
“I think in Austin and here, the conditions are such that the car slides a lot,” he explained further to F1.
Piastri is only in his third year of Formula 1 and has learned exceptionally quickly, so Stella admitted that the necessity was for the Australian to understand how to drive to his strengths in the final races.
Lando Norris took pole in Mexico while his teammate struggled on the low-grip track. Â Getty
“Especially when you have conditions like [that] with hot tarmac, sliding tyres, and the way in which you generate lap time is a way that, I would say, comes relatively naturally for Lando and less naturally for Oscar,” he said.
“And I think this requires a particular familiarity with the car, with how you exploit the car, which possibly is something on which Oscar needs to still work a little bit.
“Oscar is more a driver of having grip and pushing the car in a certain way.”