PIASTRI’s key advance to aspire to champion in F1 2025

Oscar Piastri has demonstrated greater sensitivity in the management of the tires so far this season of Formula 1, what the director of the McLaren team, Andrea Stella, says that it is a proof of the Australian work with the team engineers.

One of the criticisms that Piastri received in his first two seasons in F1, in relation to his distance with Lando Norris, was that his style seemed to take more life from the Pirelli tires, and therefore began to decline in the course of a Stint.

However, Piastri has shown a much stronger approach in 2025; Throughout a Stint, he has often matched Norris’s rhythm, sometimes even surpassing the times for the return of his most experienced teammate.

Stella believes that Piastri, now in her third season, is beginning to “dominate” the tire requirements during a race. Although it could be assumed that the slight touch that the McLaren of this year has applied to the tires has helped Piastri, the Italian does not believe that this is all.

On the contrary, Stella explained the mechanisms at stake, and the work that the leader of the championship has done to develop his skills in that area.

“Seeing the way Oscar is dominating and managing the degradation of the tires at this time, there is no way that this improvement simply comes from the car,” he said.

“The only way to exploit the improvements we have made with the car – they take place only when the pilot somehow understands what to do with the tires and the car.”

“This has happened not by chance, or not because Oscar is becoming a little greater; this is because there has been a lot of work done by engineers in terms of understanding the driving style, how tires are damaged, how can you avoid damaging the tires.”

“This is very different from when you have Graining, when you have graining in the front, graining in the rear, overheating of the front, overheating in the rear, it is not as if you will improve the way to master the tires in a way that is good for all stages, there are many ways in which you have to be able to do it.”

“As I say, I think this is testimony to the quality of the work done by Oscar and the surrounding team.”

Stella also believes that Norris has continued to improve in this regard, highlighting the slight advantage of the British towards the end of the Miami Grand Prix in their respective stines with hard tires.

Norris enjoyed much more rhythm with the hard and began to cut Piastri’s advantage, although the Australian increased the rhythm in the last three laps to seal the victory.

“Even from the point of view of Lando. I think we have seen that there are improvements, and in the last Stint with hard tires I have been able to see that in some moments Lando was, if perhaps, a little faster than Oscar.”

“For Lando there was simply too much lost time in both situations with Verstappen to have what could have been an interesting situation between our two pilots.”

“But I’m sure it will arrive in the next races.”