Andrea Stella says Oscar Piastri has been an “inspiration” to McLaren after bouncing back from a nightmare start to the season with a podium at the Japanese Grand Prix.
Piastri missed the opening two races — crashing on the way to the grid in Melbourne and suffering a mechanical failure in Shanghai — but qualified third and finished second in Japan behind race-winner Kimi Antonelli. He was in a position to win but lost out through a Safety Car period, yet impressively fended off George Russell (Mercedes) and Charles Leclerc (Ferrari).
“Despite Oscar not having started the two main races at the start the season, based on what we have seen in testing, in practice, in qualifying, based on his overall attitude and mental state, I think we are seeing the best version of Oscar – the strongest Oscar since he has been in Formula 1,” Stella said. “Finally, he had an opportunity [in Japan] to demonstrate it and he has done it at his full extent. … I think we have seen his steadiness, his strength and a strength that has been able to be passed on to the team.”
Piastri, 51 points behind championship leader Antonelli, described Japan as “probably one of my best weekends in F1.” Stella added that the drivers’ leadership provides a boost: “The team gets a lot of inspiration from the charismatic leadership that the drivers can offer. That has been definitely a boost for the entire team.”
Stella praised Piastri’s response to the opening setbacks and urged McLaren to match the drivers’ form with a more competitive car. “Well done to Oscar for the way he has been facing this start of the season. Now it is the responsibility of McLaren and the team to offer Lando and Oscar, once again, a car that can compete for victories. I think we surprised ourselves, honestly, that we were in a condition to win. If we want to be in this condition in the future consistently, we will have to improve the chassis by a few tenths of a second. That is the aim, that we have in relation to bringing upgrades to the coming races.”
McLaren face an uphill battle in the Constructors’ Championship after Mercedes’ strong start, with the Silver Arrows 45 points ahead of Ferrari and 89 points clear of McLaren after three rounds. Piastri, who narrowly lost last season’s drivers’ title to team-mate Lando Norris, said the team must fix reliability and find more pace.
“I’m very happy with the performance that I put in, very happy with the performance from the whole team. Clearly, we’ve still got some, firstly, performance to find,” he said. Norris also had an interrupted weekend with issues, highlighting McLaren’s early-season reliability woes.
Piastri noted an improved race start — he went from third to first before Turn 1 at Suzuka — and said holding Russell off for so long was encouraging. Still, he acknowledged the gap: “But we’re under no illusion. We did everything right this weekend and we still got beaten by 15 seconds, so we’ve got a pretty big gap to fill. I’m confident that we can get there, but yes, we’ve still got some work to do.”
Formula 1 returns May 1-3 with the Miami Grand Prix, the season’s second Sprint weekend.