McLaren driver Oscar Piastri explains why the Formula 1 race at Suzuka 2024 was “a bit disappointing” for his team and what the main reasons were
“It’s obviously a bit disappointing not to be closer to Ferrari and Red Bull,” says Oscar Piastri. But for the McLaren driver and his team, that was the reality at the 2024 Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka: over the race distance, McLaren was third at best.
So far, Piastri can only speculate as to the reasons: “We struggled a bit with the tires and the pace and weren’t quite as fast as the cars around us,” he told Sky. “We still have to find out why. But yes, there are definitely some interesting things to learn.”
For example, why Red Bull and Ferrari managed to get more out of the Pirelli one-size-fits-all tires when all the teams had limited practice time due to the weather. “Did that affect us more than others? It’s hard to say,” says Piastri. “It was simply unclear before the race what the pace would be like because we hadn’t done any long runs.”
He was all the more surprised when he saw the competitors’ one-stop attempts, says Piastri. The Ferrari tactics of Charles Leclerc in particular were “impressive” in his view. “And I don’t think we would have got through with just one stop.” Piastri therefore pitted twice and drove to the finish with a medium-hard-medium strategy
Why McLaren did not try a one-stop strategy
This was also due to the fact that McLaren had classified the one-stop variant as a generally “slower strategy”. “This tactic [only] looks attractive because you need one stop less,” explains Team Principal Andrea Stella. “But the tire wear is too great. If you stick with two stops, you gain back all the time [for the additional stop].”
That is why a one-stop strategy was “not an issue” for McLaren, emphasizes Stella. His team had only toyed with the idea of perhaps trying it during the red phase, but then rejected the idea again. Only Ferrari with Leclerc and Haas with Kevin Magnussen brought a one-stop tactic to the finish.
“Good for them,” says Stella. “But it’s not the case that you can gain race time with one stop. The race time comes from the speed of the car.” And McLaren simply didn’t have that in Suzuka in comparison, at least not Piastri: according to the data comparison at F1 Tempo, his speed was below the performance of Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz in all three stints
Where Piastri was slower than Norris
Lando Norris in the other McLaren MCL38, on the other hand, kept up better than Piastri. Which raises the question of why the McLaren drivers were so different in Suzuka. After all, Norris had already been almost three tenths better than Piastri in qualifying.
The reason: Piastri states that he found it difficult to find a rhythm and struggled “especially in the second sector”. The data analysis at F1 Tempo, however, shows that he loses the most time in turns 6, 11 and 17, i.e. at key points across all three sectors
Piastri is still struggling with a lack of experience
McLaren team boss Stella blames this on the experience factor and says: Piastri has already improved noticeably compared to his Suzuka debut in 2023. Suzuka 2023 was a crucial moment for Piastri: “From that point on, Oscar took a big step forward in some races in terms of how he handled the tires in the race.”
However, if tire wear is as intense as it currently is in Japan, then it takes more than a year of Formula 1 know-how “to reduce wear by five percent,” says Stella. “And if you do it five percent better, you gain a whole lot of time.
“So we have made quite a bit of progress. We’re pleased with the progress he’s made. And we are now talking about gradual progress that comes with experience and development,” says the McLaren team boss.
Piastri therefore believes that “there was clearly more in it”. This applies both to him personally and to McLaren in general. “The race definitely showed that we still have homework to do. We are clearly not quite at the level of Ferrari yet and simply need to find a bit more pace. “
