Piastri: Upgraded McLaren still has weaknesses

Oscar Piastri has warned that while McLaren looked to have taken a step forward in the British and Austrian Grands Prix, the car still has weaknesses.

McLaren was the headline story at Silverstone last weekend as Lando Norris recorded his first podium in over a year while Piastri narrowly missed out on his first top three result.

That performance comes as the squad introduces a sweeping upgrade package, spread across the last two events with the final instalment due in Hungary next weekend.

On the surface, what has been delivered, on the evidence of the last two rounds, has transformed McLaren’s season.

Team boss Andrea Stella has said there are more upgrades to come as the team finds further performance courtesy of the development path it has now set off in.

However, that does not mean the cars foibles have been eradicated.

“The car’s clearly a good step forward,” Piastri said.

“I think with that in mind, we saw in Barcelona in similar conditions [during qualifying] with the old spec car that we could also challenge for the front.

“I don’t want to be negative but I feel like there’s a little bit in that.

“Genuinely, we are more consistently further up the front now,” he added.

“The car doesn’t feel too much different And I think we still have some weaknesses we want to address, but overall, it’s faster.

“I was to choose a car that feels great, or a car that goes fast, I would choose one that goes fast and worried about the handling later.”

Next weekend’s Hungaroring is perhaps the best test of McLaren’s newfound pace with a mix of low- and medium-speed corners.

The McLaren MCL60 has typically excelled at high-speed venues, and in cooler temperatures.

“I don’t look forward to the bad races, there’s going to be a couple because there’s definitely tracks that we know we’re going to struggle more at,” warned Norris.

“I think these have been tracks where our strengths have really come through.

“High-speed, we’ve made the car probably a little bit more efficient at times, but high-speed is one of our strengths.

“But yeah, I guess if I was going to be negative, there’s definitely going to be some tracks that we are going to struggle more at.

“Our weakness is still the same and quite weak, so I think we really need to try and tackle them if we want to be able to be [at the front] more consistently.”