Piastri needed “not natural” driving style with McLaren F1 car in Mexico GP

Although Oscar Piastri’s McLaren has not fundamentally changed for a number of races, the Australian says his Formula 1 car has changed enough for him to drive in a manner that he finds “not natural” – which he says explains his recent form.

Piastri lost the championship lead for the first time since April as his team-mate Lando Norris moved a point ahead of him, having finished the Mexico Grand Prix fifth.

Having dropped to 10th at the end of the opening lap amid the melee into the first corner, Piastri recovered positions and was on the back of Oliver Bearman in the race’s final throes.

The charge was halted when the virtual safety car came out, but Piastri had mitigated some of the damage to his points lead over Max Verstappen. Regardless, he was some way off Norris throughout the weekend – a situation that Piastri does not quite understand given their closeness through the year.

Piastri explained that he had experimented with his driving style through the race, although says the traffic ahead of him made it difficult to fully grasp if the changes to his technique had worked.

“I think we certainly tried a lot of different things,” Piastri explained. “I felt like I stared at the back of a lot of cars as well, so it was difficult to get a read on whether what I was changing in my driving was working that well or not.

“We’ll have to analyse it and see if it looks good in terms of the numbers and stuff, because from a feeling point of view, when you’re behind that many cars, it’s very difficult to tell.

“It’s certainly been a learning experience for sure. For some reason the last couple of weekends has required a very different way of driving, and what’s worked well for me in the last 19 races has needed something very different the last couple of weekends.

“Trying to wrap my head around why has been a bit of a struggle, but ultimately today was about trying to experiment with some of those things.

“I think driving the way I’ve had to drive these last couple of weekends is not particularly natural for me, so it’s been about trying to exploit it as much as I can.”

Piastri tentatively suggested that he’d made some steps to uncovering more performance through the race, but wanted to analyse his data first before confirming that.

He added that, although the virtual safety car had nullified his chances to break past Bearman to collect fourth – which would have kept him in the championship lead – he was not sure if he had enough to make the move on the Haas driver.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

“I think maybe it was a little bit better, but it wasn’t so much the pace of the car, because clearly the car was pretty quick this weekend,” he said.

“It was more just trying to unlock it, and I felt like I potentially made some steps in doing that today, but ultimately when you’re behind so many cars and trying to fight for so long, it’s difficult to measure that a little bit, so hopefully we’ll get a bit more indication from some of the data.

“It would have been very, very tough [to pass Bearman]. It was one thing getting into DRS, and then it was another thing trying to overtake, so I’m not sure it made much difference in the end.”

We want to hear from you!

– The Autosport.com Team