McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella believes that Oscar Piastri “should be very proud of himself” after fighting back during a difficult Mexico City Grand Prix to finish fifth.
Piastri suffered a challenging weekend, with Sunday’s race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez extending his run of missing out on the podium to four Grands Prix.
It was in stark contrast to team mate Lando Norris, who started on pole and claimed a lights-to-flag victory by 30s, and with it, reclaimed the Drivers’ Championship lead for the first time since April by a single point from Piastri.
Stella admits that the team was trying to understand why Piastri was so far off the pace, the Australian suggesting he has had to drive the car differently in the last few races.
Having started seventh, Stella believes Piastri’s pace in the race looked stronger but was masked by being stuck in traffic throughout the 71-lap affair.
“We reviewed with Oscar extensively from a data, comment, video point of view and I think we extracted some important information in terms of how the car needs to be driven in these special low grip conditions that we are facing here in Mexico to some extent,” he said.
“And it looks like in this regime, you have to drive the car in a way that adapts to the fact that the car slides a lot and can slide and produce lap time. This is not necessarily the way in which Oscar feels naturally that he is producing lap time. So we identified a few things that we could do with the car and a few things that he could do with the driving.
“And I think Oscar should be very proud of himself of how he has handled the transition from yesterday to today. We could see in the race that he was applying this. [He] definitely had a more competitive pace than yesterday.
“And it’s a bit of a shame that he was not in condition to fully use the space because we could not find the way to just get him out of traffic. He spent the entire race looking at the gearbox of the car ahead.
“But it’s important for Oscar that we go through this kind of experience in which we learn new tools to add to the toolbox, because that’s how you become the most complete version of a Formula 1 driver.
“And this is also important for the next four races in which we’re going to find, again, different conditions. So, we need to be ready for all of them. But I think Oscar should be very proud and happy with this race.”
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