Oscar Piastri aiming to fast-track improvement in key area

The 2024 campaign sees Piastri remain with McLaren and marks the first time since 2019 that he’s not been a rookie.

PIastri won three championships in as many seasons in his meteoric rise through the junior categories before sitting out 2022.

He spent some time early in the year behind the wheel of a 2021-spec Alpine, and had some limited running with McLaren in the final weeks of the ’22, including an appearance at the end-of-season test in Abu Dhabi.

While those opportunities proved valuable to the youngster, they are limited in their value in one key area: tyre management.

Piastri openly admitted throughout his rookie year in 2023 that a priority was learning and building experience as he came to grips with the requirements of competing in F1.

That saw him build into race weekends, starting slowly before delivering in qualifying when it mattered.

However, his race pace was often a weakness as he struggled to match team-mate Lando Norris over a stint, a point Piastri himself acknowledges.

“I think there were some races last year that were strong, but I think there was definitely somewhere I struggled more, and a lot of those soft of had similar characteristics,” the Australian explained.

“There’s certainly some tyre management that I want to focus on.”

The challenge is tyre management is a skill that can really only be developed during a race.

While simulations can be carried out to an extent during practice and testing, they are not the same as being in the thick of competition.

As a result, while Oscar Piastri has been able to spend time practising and refining his single-lap pace and other aspects of his driving, tyre management remains a focus simply due to the limited opportunities to work on that specific skill.

“The only time you can really learn it is during the race, so it’s a very difficult thing to learn,” Piastri noted.

“I feel like throughout the season, you get a lot of opportunities in free practices to sort of focus on performance running and qualifying style preparation, just because of the time that’s available.

“And of course, qualifying is incredibly important, even with these cars, so I think it’s a bit of an element of experience.

“But I’m certainly trying to fast-track that as much as I can.”