Eight races into his follow-up Formula 1 campaign, Oscar Piastri finds himself 42 points and three places behind Lando Norris in the drivers championship.
Norris sensationally won the Miami Grand Prix and has stood on the podium three more times. Piastri’s second place in Monaco has been his only appearance on the rostrum this season.
On a simple reading of the numbers, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Australian isn’t landing his follow-up season after his breakout debut campaign.
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It couldn’t be further from the truth.
In May the 23-year-old Australian shifted up a gear. His sizzling form is only hinted at by his runner-up finish in Monaco, where he could have challenged for victory had it not been for the strategy-killing first-lap red flag that totally neutralised the race.
Really that’s been the story of the last month — great form hidden by circumstances beyond his control.
But bad luck can last only so long. If you dive beyond the headline results of the last three rounds, it clear Piastri is ready to capitalise.
THE MIAMI BREAKTHROUGH
Norris claimed his long-awaited maiden victory in Miami, breaking an almost three-year drought for McLaren and proving Woking was still on the right track to bridge the gap to the leaders.
It rightly put the Briton at the centre of the Formula 1 universe for the following fortnight, having finally dispatched those who doubted he would ever be able seal the deal at the elite level.
But in a nearby parallel universe it was Piastri who powered to his maiden victory in Florida.
The Australian was comfortably the weekend’s strongest McLaren driver, but his speed was masked by circumstance.
The biggest obstacle was his car, which wasn’t as heavily upgraded as his teammate’s machine.
McLaren has become adept at rushing upgrades to the racetrack, but inevitably it comes at the cost of supply. Norris got the full package, but there were enough parts to only partially update Piastri’s car.
The team estimated the difference between specifications was around 0.2 seconds.
In sprint qualifying Piastri blitzed Norris by 0.311 seconds — call it a net 0.511 seconds.
In qualifying for the grand prix he was beaten by the Briton but by only 0.081 seconds — a corrected gap of 0.119 in Piastri’s favour.
“We knew already how fast he is on a single lap,” McLaren boss Andrea Stella said, per Autosport. “Considering that he didn’t have the full package, let me pay proper credit to Oscar. The gap he had to Lando in qualifying is smaller than the difference of the package he had.
“He was really pulling off strong performance over a single lap in very difficult conditions.”
His race was set up to be similarly impressive. Piastri rocketed from sixth to third on the first lap and was running second as Verstappen’s closest challenger.
The Dutchman was set to struggle on the hard tyre in the second stint. Piastri was less than four seconds behind at the stops and would’ve been poised to pounce.
But then the safety car came out just after his pit stop, catapulting Norris into a lead he would never relinquish.
Piastri was later hit by Carlos Sainz, sustained damage and finished outside the points — unjust deserts for what should have been a race-winning performance.
“Lando said something really nice before,” Stella said. “He said by looking at Oscar overtaking a Ferrari, he felt, ‘Wow, we are actually there today’, so it was a realisation for Lando himself.
“He comes away from this weekend with this sort of conviction, especially in terms of race pace, which is something we wanted to improve having looked at Japan, having looked at China.
“I think Oscar comes out of this weekend even more conscious of his strengths as a driver.
“For me, he’s in a very strong place.”
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ANOTHER CHANCE LOST IN IMOLA
There could be no doubting Piastri’s pace at the following Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, where he was finally equipped with the full upgrade package. Yet the result eluded him again.
Imola is a fearsome racing circuit that requires maximum commitment from drivers looking to string together a competitive lap. This was Piastri’s first visit to the historic Italian track in any racing category.
He bested Norris to qualify second for the first time in his career, lapping just 0.074 seconds behind pole-getter Verstappen.
He wouldn’t start there, however, after being dropped three places on the grid for impeding Kevin Magnussen during Q1.
Piastri was blameless in the incident, as drivers usually are in this sort of situation. The stewards found that his pit wall failed to inform him the Haas driver was approaching at speed, and mirror visibility at that part of the circuit was too poor for him to pre-empt the issue.
Condemned to fifth on the grid at a track around which overtaking is extremely difficult, the Aussie made the best of a bad situation, gaining one place on Sainz to finish fourth and just off the podium.
Norris, starting second, found his McLaren had the pace to harry Verstappen in the final stint, and the pair finished the race separated by just 0.725 seconds.
Could the marginally faster Piastri have made up that difference? We’ll never know, but it was another golden opportunity ripped from the young gun by circumstances outside his control.
“I always try to not think about the end results so much,” he said. “Leaving a weekend satisfied with what I’ve done in my control is a more important thing.
“I think the last two weekends, especially Imola, have been very much the case.
“Of course if you get a trophy at the end, especially the biggest one, then it feels nice, but I think the momentum in the last few weekends is definitely already helping with results that in the history books mean not a lot.”
MONACO PROVES THE POTENTIAL
The momentum carried Piastri through to Monte Carlo, the most famous race of them all.
In 2023, when the McLaren car was still in its primordial form, he was knocked out in Q2 in 11th. He started and finished one place behind Norris, however, with the Briton 10th on the grid.
This year he was McLaren’s form man, and at a true drivers circuit, he excelled.
He built methodically and relentlessly through practice to establish himself as a weekend protagonist, and he was pipped by Charles Leclerc to pole by just 0.154 seconds.
No driver will ever claim to have put together a perfect qualifying lap in Monte Carlo, but had both Piastri and Leclerc put together their best three sectors in Q3, Piastri would have snatched pole from the home hero by 0.07 seconds.
The speed was there, and McLaren was feeling punchy. With Ferrari carrying years of emotional baggage into the race, Woking should have had a good shot at strategising Piastri into the lead.
Instead the first-lap red flag killed the battle, allowing every driver to make their one required tyre change and run to the finish. With overtaking impossible without a massive tyre advantage, Piastri had no hope of moving forward.
But his first podium of the year was won after a luckless couple of races, and it was a timely reminder that the second-year driver belongs among the leaders this season.
Piastri started his second season solidly but unspectacularly as he and the team felt their way into the new campaign, but he’s taken off since the beginning of May.
His season average qualifying deficit to Norris is 0.076 seconds, the second-closest teammate pairing in the sport after Ferrari. In May he’s had an average advantage of 0.018 seconds.
He’s been qualifying 0.5 places behind Norris this year — again the second-closest combination behind the Scuderia — but in May that swapped to being 0.67 places ahead, beating his teammate two weekends to one.
There have been signs that his race pace at circuits and in conditions that stress the Pirelli tyres still needs work, though there’s also no doubt he’s made excellent progress on that front during the off-season and is a consistent match for Norris on Sunday.
Norris has admitted several times since the two joined forces that Piastri has forced him to raise his game. That’s clearly been the case in the last month, with the Australian showing him the way at all three races.
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HOW HIGH CAN McLAREN FLY?
Piastri’s relative inexperience will still count for something in crunch moments, but his potential in 2024 is much more about car than it is seat time.
During the off-season McLaren said it was seeing a similar rate of improvement as it had during 2023, when it sensationally recovered from being among the very slowest teams on the grid to being Red Bull Racing’s closest challenger.
After an inconclusive start to the year, the team’s first update package of the season brought in May has made good on that promise — perhaps more than the team had even expected.
“In terms of the traits of the upgraded car compared to last year, what we see and what we expected is just more downforce in all conditions,” Stella said. “The car compared to what we expected seems to be well behaved also in low speed, possibly slightly more than we anticipated based on our development tools, which is good news.
“Obviously this is something that we need to understand very accurately so that we have the right information to further develop in this direction, because it seems to be very profitable for lap time and also seems to make us competitive at circuits which have low-speed corners.”
It tallies with what Piastri has felt since receiving the full upgrade, especially at the super low speed Monaco circuit, leaving him extremely positive about his outlook.
“I think it’s been three very different circuits in the past three races and we’ve been competitive at all of them,” he said of the set of three grands prix in May.
“Miami was probably one of our worst circuits before this year. Imola has always been kind to us, but we had a very strong weekend there.
“Let’s say our car’s never been the strongest in the slow corners, and this weekend [in Monaco] we’ve been very quick again.
“I think we can be confident wherever we go. I feel like we don’t have to rely on the high-speed circuits like we did last year to get our results, which is a very exciting thing to have going forward.”
Piastri has had an understated start to the 2024 season, but there’s every chance the final two-thirds of the year will far more remarkable.