Oscar Piastri assessed the regulatory changes that the FIA applied to Formula 1 starting from the Miami GP and reflected on whether McLaren can benefit to try and get closer to Mercedes in the championship.
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During April, the sport’s governing body met with the teams to discuss adjustments to the rulebook. After some meetings, points were implemented and will be adopted for the United States round, which takes place on the first weekend of May.
Speaking about the changes and the impacts they might have on the grid, Piastri showed cautious optimism, and also hopes that McLaren’s gap will start to decrease from the next race.
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“I’d love to say yes [the changes will help], but I really don’t think that’s the case. Mercedes, I believe, had a better understanding of the power unit and how to extract the most from it. I think in Japan, at least from my side, it was obviously a very compromised weekend on Lando [Norris]’s side, but from my side of the garage, I felt we did a very good job of maximizing everything from the power unit and the car we had.”
“Clearly we are still quite a bit behind in terms of downforce and also chassis performance. So I’m sure that this difference in power unit understanding will decrease a bit, but I believe the deficit in Japan wasn’t because we were losing time due to the power unit or because we didn’t exploit it well; it was because our car simply wasn’t as good as theirs. So I think we now have an important piece of that puzzle.”
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