Can Oscar Piastri maintain the momentum that he’s started to build over the first four races of the 2025 Formula 1 season?
He heads into Sunday’s race in Jeddah just three points shy of McLaren team mate Lando Norris. They’ve been closely matched, but Piastri’s late off in the Melbourne rain proved costly and gave the Englishman the initial advantage.
Since then the Aussie has scored two wins from pole position, and he’s shown beyond all doubt that his one-lap pace has taken a big step since last year, when Norris was dominant.
Lando meanwhile has made it clear that he’s not comfortable with the MCL39, and thus far is not maximising his potential.
With his main rival on the backfoot now would seem to be the perfect time for Piastri to press home the advantage.
Amid all the talk of papaya rules and equal treatment if he continues to outqualify and outrace Norris then the World Championship will ultimately take care of itself.
“Qualifying is incredibly important I think,” he said when I put that to him in Jeddah on Thursday.
“Regardless of the kind of intra-team dynamics with pit stop preferences and whatever that that causes. Just the power of clean air is so important. So I think regardless of that, you always want to be qualifying at the front.
“But yes, with two drivers in the same car, I think with very similar pace, whenever you can be ahead, it’s a pretty major advantage.
“So it is going to be important to have good qualifying. But we’ve seen in the past that it’s not always everything, there’s other areas where you can make up the difference, if you do a good enough job.”
Piastri worked over the winter to improve his one-lap form, and it appears to have paid dividends. The team mate qualifying battle now stands at 3:2 in his favour, including the Shanghai sprint.
“I think the hard work we’ve been putting in definitely has been making a difference,” he says. “I think I’ve felt comfortable in qualifying, and felt like I’ve taken a bit of a step up. I think last year it wasn’t much that I often missed out by.
“But this year I’ve had a couple qualifying just on the wrong side of that gap still, but also more qualifyings on the right side of that gap now. So it’s been a lot of hard work in a lot of different areas, trying to get those last few hundredths of a second. And I think it has been paying off.”
His earlier dirty air reference is significant. We’ve seen this year how Lewis Hamilton in the Shanghai sprint and Max Verstappen in Suzuka were able to stay out in front of potentially faster McLarens. Piastri doesn’t believe that the MCL39 suffers more in traffic than other cars.
“Not necessarily, I think everybody struggles with it, it’s pretty similar for most of the teams,” he says. “We saw in China that the Ferrari was very quick through the whole weekend, and they also struggled to get through the dirty air. So I think it’s just a grid wide problem.
“I don’t think it’s specific to us, and I don’t really plan on testing that theory too many times hopefully! It is just difficult for everybody with more and more downforce going on, more and more dirty air.”
One intriguing aspect to the McLaren battle is that the team will have to work hard to ensure equal treatment, and especially that neither driver gets an advantage from having a single set of development parts, which happened on occasion last season when the team had to get new bits to the track asap. Piastri doesn’t see that as an issue this time around.
“I think this year the situation is very, very different,” he says. “I think last year, especially at the beginning of the season, we were incredibly keen to get whatever performance we could onto the car as quickly as possible. And we needed to make up a points deficit, in the constructors’ championship, especially.
“This year, we’re in a very different position. Obviously, we have already a decent gap in the constructors’ championship and both of us fighting for the drivers’ championship.
“It’s expected that that we’ll both have an equal opportunity and the same car to be able to fight for the drivers’ championship, and obviously in the constructors’ championship, we’re in a good place. While we have the opportunity to keep it equal, and have the same car every weekend, we should do that.”
Any advantage that either man can establish will have to come from the cockpit. You don’t have to be a sports psychologist to see the contrasts in approach between the pair, with Norris wearing his heart on his sleeve and being open about his struggles, and Piastri seemingly gliding serenely through each race weekend.
“I think for everyone, they kind of work in different ways,” he says. “For me, trying to stay calm is a very important thing. It helps me get the best out of myself. So that’s how I think I operate the best. And I think it’s been working so far.”
So does he ever get emotional in the car?
“I have been a couple of times through my career,” he admits. “And yeah, I think when they’re negative emotions, it does have a negative impact. So that’s why I try… I think it comes somewhat naturally being calm and trying to stay relaxed, but there’s a lot of conscious effort on that as well.
“But there’s also positive emotions that are there as well. I said after China if you had a camera on me, and you could see my face, I was pretty damn excited.
“So there are emotions out there. The radio is a button for a reason, and you use it when, when you think you should. There’s probably more that you don’t see under the helmet…”
What then of this weekend? Norris had the edge by just 0.163s in Friday’s FP2 session, and it will be fascinating to see how qualifying unfolds when it really matters on Saturday evening.
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Adam Cooper F1 