Oscar Piastri reflects on his improvement and returns to Suzuka, the scene of his maiden grand prix podium. He discusses his achievements in the British Grand Prix, Belgium sprint, and Qatar race.
F1 2024 Japanese Grand Prix : Oscar Piastri improvement, analysis, back at scene of his maiden grand prix podium, Suzuka , McLaren, research and development , Andrea Stella , Lando Norris The 2023 Japanese Grand Prix was the scene of Oscar Piastri ’s first grand prix podium, but the Aussie young gun rarely mentions it among the seminal moments of his rookie campaign.
And of course there was Qatar, where he had the measure of teammate Lando Norris all weekend, taking sprint pole and victory and finishing second in the grand prix.His result there was superb. It was his first time visiting the fabled and ferocious Suzuka, but inexperience was no impediment to him pipping Norris to second in qualifying, which he turned into his maiden podium on Sunday.Some good fortune got Piastri ahead of Norris at the start of the second stint.
But that 2023 performance could be a critical part of his second F1 season in 2024 as the sport prepares to return to Japan this weekend.PODCAST: McLaren returns to the scene of its first double podium of 2023 with Oscar Piastri looking like a much-improved package, but can it get ahead of Ferrari to be Red Bull Racing’s closest challenger?It’s no criticism of Piastri to point out that chunky Japanese margin from last September.
Comparing their final stints over 15 laps — their only directly comparable runs — Piastri lost only 2.5 seconds to his teammate — and even that was largely down to lapped traffic. It wasn’t in his raw results, though — perhaps another reason his Suzuka podium garners relatively little attention.It’s why there’s been considerable interest in how he would start this year’s campaign, having had the entire off-season to process what he’d learnt rather than needing to digest his lessons as he bounced weekly from track to track.
“This is something you only gain once you have experience — and you make good use of experience, because you can spend a lot of time in Formula 1, but if you don’t grow every single day, then you’re going to basically stay at the level where you are. “You have to understand from the context that, ‘Oh, this context could lead to this problem before the problem actually manifests itself’.
It has a fantastic flow that’s characteristic of old-school, classic circuits increasingly rare on the calendar. This year, however, Red Bull Racing has taken a bigger step forward, and into the gap has slipped Ferrari, which has also made significant gains. The battle with Ferrari will be more interesting. The Scuderia has practically caught up in the faster corners and still holds an advantage in the slower bends.
“We’ve out-developed our competitors since this time last year by a huge step. It gets harder and harder to do that the closer you get to the top, but there are still plenty of things for us to do.
F1 2024 Japanese Grand Prix Oscar Piastri Suzuka Mclaren Analysis Research And Development Andrea Stella Lando Norris
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