Oscar Piastri leads the 2025 World Championship. His secret lies in qualifying, where he found the decisive hundredth during the winter break
Oscar Piastri had one big goal during the 2024/25 Formula 1 winter break: to improve his performance in qualifying on a single lap. The McLaren driver believes he has achieved this, which is why he expects to achieve better results in the 2025 season than in the past. Thanks to his consistency and six Grand Prix victories, the Australian leads the world championship ahead of his teammate Lando Norris, who is nine points behind.
The 24-year-old spent two years in the shadow of his British teammate, but in 2025 he seems to have broken the deadlock. With ten race weekends to go before the end of the season, the McLaren driver leads the overall standings, but Norris is hot on his heels. Despite his current form, Piastri cannot afford to make any mistakes, as his teammate would immediately take advantage of any slip-up.
In an interview with our sister site Autosport, Piastri explains the areas he wanted to improve in the run-up to the 2025 season. In 2024, his main focus was still on tire management, which he has now mastered well. That’s why he shifted his focus to qualifying in order to get a better starting position for the races.
Improved everywhere?
“I think I’ve improved in all areas,” Piastri said in an interview. “From 2023 to 2024, I took a big step forward in tire management. That’s why I changed my focus, because the pace itself was no longer the problem. But there were weekends when I still had to find that little bit extra.”
“Finding that performance during the winter break was the big thing,” he explains. “We also tried to find even more in qualifying. I made some races unnecessarily difficult for myself last year. This attempt to improve makes the races look very different today compared to last year.”
“That was the big focus: ‘How can I improve my results?’ Of course, you can’t do that by just saying, ‘I’m going to qualify better this year.’ I had to work on how to do that. A lot of the things I wanted to improve also helped on race day.“
Qualifying closer than ever
”Of course, the focus was on the data, how I could adapt my driving style, what I needed to work on,“ explains the Australian. ”What are the specific types of corners? What are the specific tracks? All those things. That was the main work, because that’s science you can understand.“
”But I tried to improve in all areas – from a mental and physical standpoint. How do I drive the car? And how do I get the most out of the team around me?“ We’re talking about such small margins this year, and I’m trying to find those hundredths everywhere. It was a lot of work with my engineers and the team to figure out how I can drive faster.”
