McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes Oscar Piastri’s calm and collected win from pole position at the 2025 F1 Chinese GP showed just much the Australian improved his racecraft and general speed over the off-season.
Piastri’s commanding victory on Sunday in Shanghai was the perfect way to bounce back after a disappointing home race last time out in Melbourne, in which he spun from second place in the tricky, damp conditions of the final sector just a few laps from the end.
Piastri’s big year-to-year improvement around Shanghai
But more so than a statement of intent after a tough season opener, Stella believes Piastri showed how much he improved his racecraft, tyre management and overall speed over the off-season – but even more so compared to this time last year, when the Australian massively struggled in his first ever Chinese GP, finishing in eighth place whilst team-mate Lando Norris took a comfortable P2:
“Yes,” Stella replied in his print media session when asked if Piastri has taken a big leap forward compared to 2024. “I think his racecraft, his overall speed, his, to some extent his questions related to the race, they were very punctual.
“They were like the right question, at the right time. So I would consider that, once again, as part of the racecraft. They have improved over the winter.
“There’s been quite a lot of work, you know, a long list of opportunities, a long list of races that you review. Here we should do this, we should do that, these adaptations.
“But for me, the biggest indication of his progress is 12 months ago here in China.
“I still remember after the race, having a chat one-to-one with Oscar outside one of these hospitalities and, like, scratching our head a little bit and saying, like ‘there’s a lot to pick in terms of learning from this race’.
“And looking 12 months after, I think we took all this learning, and we capitalised.”
Sharing critical information between the two garages after the Sprint
Despite a very strong Sunday, McLaren’s weekend didn’t get off to the best of starts on the Sprint portion of the weekend, as a peaky car set-up meant they overused the tyres in the Sprint and couldn’t utilise their pace advantage – which he revealed is something they worked on by merging feedback from both Norris and Piastri in order to create a better all-round mechanical platform for their driving styles:
“There was good learning from the Sprint [on Saturday],” he said. “I think we saw that with the set-up that we had the car was using the front tyres too aggressively so we needed to make some adjustments to the setup of the car.
“But we also worked extensively with the two drivers to adapt the driving style.
“According to their natural driving style, Oscar was having less graining than Lando, so Lando needed to pick something from Oscar.
“And there were a few things that Oscar picked from Lando.”
The importance of having two “high-level” drivers
Stella went on to explain the importance of having two high-level and evenly matched drivers in order to get “valid” and “relevant” data that can be shared across the two garages for the greater benefit of the team, pointing out it had been the case in Melbourne as well, with the two cars very evenly matched until those final stages where Piastri’s home F1 race derailed:
“To be honest, this is something that I’ve said in Australia as well: the importance of having two drivers of this very high level is the fact that the information one can take from the other is valid information, is relevant.
“And if you can do a good job of merging the strengths of both, then you elevate your game. This is what I saw in Australia very, very clearly, and this is also what I saw here.”
He mentioned how the two drivers were in constant learning of each other’s strengths and weaknesses in order to maximise the potential of the MCL39, which is quite quickly gaining recognition as the fastest car on the grid, but one that is “tricky” to get the best out of it consistently:
“I don’t want to disclose too much, but definitely Lando was even making questions about ‘how is this?’; and this is something that he was trying to adapt for the race somehow having looked at what Oscar was doing.
“There were some other aspects that Oscar was double checking, because he picked from Lando.
“It makes our internal competition interesting, but I think overall it elevates the game so much for the team that we are very lucky to have Oscar and Lando with us.”
After what was their 50th 1-2 in Formula One, McLaren now leads the constructors’ championship by 21 points over nearest rivals Mercedes, with Red Bull a further 21 back in third place.
