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A year ago, a fresh-faced Piastri spent a day and a half in a troubled McLaren, working with his new team to lay the foundation for his rookie season.
With the experience gained throughout that hugely promising campaign, the Australian now cuts a more confident figure within the team.
“I think for me, everything is just more relaxed,” said Piastri when asked by Speedcafe about his testing experience a year on from his debut.
“Just simple things are different. I know everyone in the team. Little things like I know my seat’s comfy… There’s always little things but just those sort of basic comforts are much more natural this year.”
On top of being more comfortable in his position within the team and surrounds, he has also grown as a driver and is more equipped to deal with the testing process than he was a year ago.
He now has the experience to understand what the car needs from him versus what he needs from the car, a skill team boss Andrea Stella noted as a key development.
There have also been changes in Piastri’s interactions with his engineers and the rest of the team, prompting Stella to suggest the 22-year-old has matured as a driver.
“Definitely what we have seen much more, if I compare to last year, here in Bahrain, much more, let’s say, self-awareness,” he said when Speedcafe asked about Piastri’s growth over the past 12 months.
“You know, like, where the limit of the car is, where the limit in terms of him being a rookie is – sometimes, when you are a rookie, you [have] to explore so many options in terms of driving that sometimes you are not sure like ‘is it me, that I need to drive a different way, or is it the car that needs to behave in a different way?’
“I think now he’s much more aware, much more rapidly, of ‘I need to adapt in this way in this place, but the car needs to do this for me.’
“So this awareness definitely improved.
“Likewise, the rapidity in which he develops,” Stella added.
“Day 1, already while he was doing some continuous laps, he made a click in terms of performance,” Stella added.
“He kind of took these improvements into the next round. So this happens much, much quicker. That’s the main thing that was apparent to me.”
While the car is different to that driven a year ago, and is notably better than the initially under-developed MCL60, stable regulations have played to Piastri’s favour.
“Going into it with, firstly, a comparison of last year’s car to this year’s car, but also with a pretty similar overview on what I want to improve and work on from last year,” Piastri said of the difference to a year ago.
“Instead of trying to learn first a new car, with new tyres, and a very different regulation, that is all stable this year and I can focus on the more specific things of how I drive it – and you know certain things I want to work on from last year.
“All those kinds of things mean it’s a very different kind of test.
“There’s a lot less new things for me, which is always nice.”
The opening round of the 2023 F1 season, the Bahrain Grand Prix, begins on Thursday ahead of the Saturday night race.
