Oscar Piastri says recent form has shown McLaren is capable of fighting for victory at every type of circuit moving forward, following his podium at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Lando Norris won in Miami when McLaren introduced a major upgrade to its car, and followed that by finishing second to Max Verstappen by just 0.7s in Imola. Piastri — who qualified well at both events but failed to score a podium — then just missed out on pole position to Charles Leclerc in Monaco and finished second to the Ferrari, with the spread of tracks confirming to the Australian that McLaren is now a permanent fixture at the front.
“I think it’s been three very different circuits in the past three races, and we’ve been competitive at all of them,” Piastri said. “Miami was probably one of our worst circuits before this year. Imola has always been kind to us, but we had a very strong weekend there, and [Monaco]… Let’s say our car’s never been the strongest in the slow corners, and we’ve been very quick again.
“So I think we can be confident wherever we go. I feel like we don’t have to rely on the high-speed circuits like we did last year to get our results, which is a very exciting thing to have going forward. And, yeah, I think the pecking order is as tight as it’s ever been, especially [in Monaco].
“Going into qualifying, I think we thought that there could be any one of four teams on pole, which I don’t think we’ve been able to say for a while. So, I think we can definitely be in the fight every weekend.”
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Team principal Andrea Stella believes part of McLaren’s confidence stems from the fact that its latest developments are actually proving more beneficial in low-speed corners than the team had been anticipating.
“In terms of the traits of the upgraded car compared to last year, what we see and what we expected is just more downforce in all conditions,” Stella said. “The car compared to what we expected seems to be well-behaved also in low speed, possibly slightly more than we anticipated based on our development tools.
“Which is good news, but obviously this is something that we need to understand very accurately so that we have the right information to further develop in this direction because it seems to be very profitable for lap time, and also seems to make us competitive in circuits which have low-speed corners.”