Piastri will still have the older wing this weekend
Oscar Piastri will still be without the latest McLaren MCL38 front wing spec in Mexico City this weekend, although the Australian has downplayed any loss of performance relative to his team mate.
The wing was part of a package introduced in Austin, although only Lando Norris raced with it.
More updates are set be introduced in the coming races, with the team trying to ensure that they are fuller proven before they are signed off.
Asked by this writer if he had the new wing this weekend Piastri said: “Not at the moment, I don’t think. But either way, it’s a very, very small performance increase. So if I don’t have it, or if I do, it’s certainly not what’s going to make or break my weekend.
“The only thing I’m missing from last week is the front wing. Again, all of the changes we made were very, very small and minor things. So not having one of them is certainly not the end of the world.”
Team boss Andrea Stella believes that Mexico City will be more favourable to McLaren than Austin, and Piastri agrees.
“Hopefully,” he said. “We’ll see. I mean, it’s quite different in a lot of ways to Austin. Obviously, the kind of altitude and stuff like that makes it quite a different challenge, but hopefully it helps, it suits us a little bit more.
“I don’t think we necessarily expected Austin to be – painful is a bit of an exaggeration – but not as competitive as we hoped. But it wasn’t a complete surprise.”
Piastri says that the team has a better understanding as to why the MCL38 lost form in Austin.
“I think we’ve got some good ideas about why qualifying was so tricky,” he said. “Looking back at the weekend, I think the race itself was actually quite positive, especially from 12 months ago. Especially the first stint, I was going with Lando.
“The second stint a few mistakes in the middle of that hard stint, but for 95% of the race, we were a very even match. And I think even just as a team, our pace was actually quite strong. It was just that we were very slow at the start of the race, and then everyone built the gaps, and then that was kind of it for us.
“So I think it looked a little bit worse than it was. It’s just that, with the competition being so tight, if you put a step wrong, then you go from being first and second to where we were in fourth and fifth. So yeah, it’s just a very tight field.”
Adam Cooper F1 