McLaren and Ferrari are expected to challenge Red Bull Racing on the streets of Monte Carlo, building on strong performances at recent events.
Lando Norris won the Miami Grand Prix, heading Max Verstappen on track to claim his first win – and McLaren’s first since the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.
Upgrades introduced by McLaren for Miami have catapulted the squad forward, modifying the characteristics of the MCL38 – improving its low- and medium-speed performance at the expense of some of its high-speed strength.
Ferrari has also been victorious this season, courtesy of Carlos Sainz in Australia, though Verstappen was an early retirement on that occasion.
However, the Scuderia has proved a close match for Red Bull Racing, raising the tantalising prospect of a three-way scrap for supremacy each weekend.
“It’s exciting,” Piastri enthused at the prospect of heading into this weekend’s grand prix as a contender for victory.
“In terms of the approach, it honestly doesn’t change that much.
“Whether you’re fighting for 15th, for 10th, for first, you’re trying to get the most out of the car you’ve got – it’s just a little bit more fun when you know that, if you get everything right, you can win.
“So it’s not changed the world from that side of things. It’s just a bit of a boost when you’re fighting for wins and podiums.”
Piastri is aware that McLaren is relatively new to winning.
While it’s had success in the past, it hasn’t been a regular race winner for over a decade, and unlike the likes of Red Bull Racing, hasn’t yet turned it into a habit.
He pointed to the penalty he picked up in Imola, where he was dropped from second on the grid to fifth, as an example of the small errors that can prove costly when fighting for race wins.
“It wasn’t just one thing,” he noted.
“There was sort of a combination of a few little things that unfortunately led to that penalty, which we’ve definitely gone through.
“Some things that are reasonably easy to fix, some things that require a bit more thinking.
“And I think that comes with the unfamiliar territory of where we are now.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve been consistently at this pace – even last year, we were fighting for podiums in certain races, but wins still looked unrealistic.
“I think it’s really been two weekends where we’ve gone into a race thinking we could win,” Piastri added.
“I mean, even Miami, we didn’t think we could win, and it just turned out that we did.
“So it kind of comes with that. We’ve still got a lot of learning to do and readjusting because we have been in this position before as a team, it’s just been a little while.”
Opening practice for the Monaco Grand Prix begins at 13:30 local time on Friday (21:30 AEST).
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