Oscar Piastri says he fought hard for fifth place in the Mexico City Grand Prix and limited the damage in the drivers’ championship, but is having to learn to drive his McLaren differently.
Lando Norris dominated in Mexico, winning by over 30 seconds from Charles Leclerc having started from pole position. Piastri, by contrast, was over half a second off his teammate in qualifying but improved from seventh on the grid to finish fifth, and says the more important outcome will be if he has addressed some areas that helped extract more from the car.
“There was a lot of fight,” Piastri told Sky Sports. “The whole race I was right behind someone and struggling with dirty air, so that was pretty difficult.
“For me, the biggest thing is trying to learn the things I want to learn. [In qualifying] it became obvious after the session that there were a few things I had to change pretty majorly in the way I was driving. If I’ve made some progress with that I will be happy, but obviously, when your teammate wins the race, finishing fifth is nothing that extravagant.”
Given a lack of upgrades from McLaren in the latter part of the season, Piastri admits it’s been challenging to understand why he needs to move away from a driving style that had worked so well for so long this year.
“I think I have had to drive very differently in the last couple of weeks. That’s been a little bit strange to get my head around,” he said. “I have been driving exactly the same all year – but the last couple of weekends the car, the tires or something has required quite a different way of driving. I’ve just not really gone to that. I tried a few things changing it up and once we analyze whether that’s been effective or not hopefully we’ll see some progress.
“The car has not changed for a while now, so it is nothing to do with the car. Given how the pace has differentiated last couple of races, clearly Lando has found it easier to dial into that and I haven’t.
“I think it is important to remember for the other 19 races the way I’ve been driving has been working pretty well… It is about adding tools to the toolbox rather than re-inventing myself.”