Oscar Piastri’s engineer reveals where McLaren were ‘very surprised’ by his lack of pace last season

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Oscar Piastri is currently in prime position to score a maiden Formula 1 title at the end of the season with McLaren.

He currently leads the drivers’ championship by nine points from teammate Lando Norris, with 10 intense events to go.

Fans will be hoping that the fight between the McLaren drivers goes right down to the wire, and there’s a strong possibility it could, given how closely matched they are.

Piastri is only in his third season, compared to Norris, who is in his seventh, but they both look like veterans on track.

According to 1980 Formula 1 champion Alan Jones, Piastri is acting ‘smarter’ than Norris, and it may be handing him an advantage.

Norris can repeat one James Hunt feat by winning back-to-back Dutch Grands Prix this weekend, which would boost his hopes and leave him two points behind Piastri after Sunday at worst.

READ MORE: Emerson Fittipaldi makes Ayrton Senna comparison to Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s 2025 title fight

Tom Stallard reveals McLaren were ‘very surprised’ by Oscar Piastri’s lack of pace at the 2024 Spanish Grand Prix

Piastri has done something ‘remarkable’ at McLaren by finding a way to make giant leaps in progress every season. His current rate of improvement is almost scary.

A true representation of how far he has come is shown by race engineer Tom Stallard, who has revealed to The Race just how far he has come compared to 2024.

“Spain is a circuit that we always expected him to be good at, and we were very surprised last year when he wasn’t,” he said. “We had to do a lot of internal investigation into what had happened. And actually quite a lot of the problems were related to where the car was in Spain, rather than Oscar.

“China is a fantastically difficult circuit and it actually took him until the last run in qualifying, really, to figure out Turns 1, 2, 3, 4, it’s just an incredibly complicated corner. It’s not just a corner where you brake, coast through the mid-corner and come on power.

“There’s a lot of variation in line, adjusting your line with the speed you’ve taken and the speed you’ve taken with the line you want. And it’s all very linked in a way that [in] more simple corners that’s not so much the case,” Stallard continued.

“Both years he’s been in Japan, we’ve struggled a lot. There was the one where qualifying went very well in the first year, but then in race pace, he was quite a long way off.

“Struggled to look after the rear tyres. And then the next year, we kind of got on top of the race pace, but there was still just a bit of an underlying pace issue. Whereas this year, he was right on it.”

READ MORE: What Andrea Stella has now privately said about Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s 2025 F1 title battle

McLaren warned of the ‘inevitable’ outcome they have now created in 2025 title battle

McLaren’s stance over the last few seasons has been clear. The constructors’ championship is most important to them, and must be sealed at all costs.

Whatever happens with respect to the drivers’ championship after that is fair game. How they control the battle between their two drivers should be fascinating.

McLaren have closed in on an ‘inevitable’ outcome, according to Guenther Steiner, who believes that Piastri and Norris are bound to crash.

The most recent example of a battle between teammates like this was between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. Towards the end of most campaigns, they didn’t collide too much. The stakes were too high.