System 1 | Stella: Piastri ‘made progress compared to last year’ at Suzuka

McLaren F1 boss Andrea Stella is delighted to see Oscar Piastri making progress. The Italian doesn’t think the criticism that his driver’s weekend in Japan was worse than that of 2023 is fair, and insists the Australian did better this year at Suzuka.

“I think with Oscar, I would rather see how much we have progressed compared to last year, here in Suzuka. Oscar qualified very well, but he had a little problem in the race.” remember Stella.

“Of course it’s more than this year. So from there, in a few races, because Japan was towards the end of the season, Oscar improved a lot in terms of tire management in the race.”

Stella is convinced that Piastri’s development trajectory will allow him to continue to gain performance and tire economy in the future: “But obviously when the damage is extensive, it requires a lot of training.”

“It takes experience to improve the damage by 5%. And if you improve it by 5%, you save a lot of time. So we have made a lot of progress. We are satisfied “And now we are talking about increasing profits. , which comes with experience and development.”

The Italian believes that Piastri was overtaken by George Russell at the end of the race because he destroyed his tires while chasing Fernando Alonso, and that the damage and heat of those tires is the worst problem on the line.

“I think keeping straight was always a problem, but you lose more time because of tire damage, as soon as someone has more damage, or a car with newer tires meets a car with older tires.”

“You have such a speed difference, and you can see people attacking at the hairpin, or at the Spoon. So it’s the tire damage that dominates the effects of the skid trail.”