Oscar Piastri has conceded he will have to “work for” a result at this weekend’s British Grand Prix rather than relying on the updates on his McLaren to do the job on his behalf at Silverstone.
Piastri’s performance over the weekend at the Austrian GP was compromised to a degree by the fact team-mate Lando Norris’ car was the only one of the two MCL60s to enjoy the benefit of an upgrade package.
Phase two of the developments are to be rolled out from Friday, with Norris again enjoying the privilege of the new parts, whilst Piastri will likely remain one step behind.
Piastri will at least enjoy the boost in performance from the initial updates that benefitted Norris at the Red Bull Ring where the Briton finished fourth in Sunday’s final classification after a post-race re-jig due to penalties being applied for the welter of track limits infringements.
“We’ll see how much of an impact the car made in the result for Lando, but I’m sure he drove a good race as well,” said Piastri.
“It’s not as simple as bolting the new bits on and having the same result as Lando, I’ve got to definitely work for it.
“I’ll see what I could have done better with my car, and then try and apply whatever I learn for this weekend.
“But I am looking forward to getting the new parts on the car at a circuit I’ve always been a big fan of, and where I’ve been quite successful as well. We’ll see what we can do, and hopefully, we’ll have both cars in the points.”
It was evident in Austria that the upgraded car propelled McLaren towards challenging for the ‘best-of-the-rest’ tag behind Red Bull, although Ferrari ultimately took that honour courtesy of the latest developments on its SF-23.
The Red Bull Ring has also historically been good to Norris, and it was no different on Sunday as he delivered again.
As to whether McLaren can again be the third-best team at Silverstone after outperforming Aston Martin and Mercedes in Austria, Piastri replied: “It’ll be tricky.
“Historically, with every car, we’ve been decent (in Austria) in the past, and obviously Lando’s got a very good track record.
“We’ll see at Silverstone. I think depending on the weather, that could still play a big factor.
“Obviously, the Astons and the Mercedes are usually very good when it’s very hot, so we’ll see if the UK summer is still going when we get there.
“We’ll have to wait and see. We could be third, like we were at the weekend, or we could be fifth or sixth behind Alpine.”
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