Oscar Piastri has certainly had an interesting rookie year. After sitting out least year and becoming Alpine’s reserve driver, and a contract dispute which saw him ultimately end up driving for McLaren, the beginning of the season showed that Piastri may have made the wrong decision by switching teams as the MCL60 was slow.
However, by the end of the season, Piastri’s stellar driving in a fast car proved that his decision to jump ship from the French team to the Woking outfit has paid off, as he excelled throughout the second part of the season.
The rookie finished the campaign in 9th place in the championship (for the record, Lance Stroll has spent 7 years in F1 and reached the top 10 for the first time this season), 2 fastest laps, 2 podiums, 2 sprint podiums and becoming the first rookie to win a race (albeit a sprint one) since Lewis Hamilton did so in 2007.
Photo Credit: McLaren Racing
That being said, Piastri has had a lot of ups and downs throughout his season, and has had a lot to learn. For him, his biggest lesson was that “you can’t rest”.
“Making a mistake in Formula 1 costs you a lot more than it might do otherwise. All the drivers are extremely competitive, all the teams are now extremely competitive, and if you take it a little bit easy you can suddenly lose a lot of time, a lot of positions. So that’s probably the biggest lesson.
“There have been specifics on driving and energy management as well. It’s been a busy year. But yeah, just how competitive everything’s been, that you can’t rest on your laurels.”
When he talked about his personal management or physical sleep when mentioning that you can’t rest, he said: “Both! It’s been a busy year.”
“Just having a lot less spare time to relax and stuff like that,” said Piastri. “It’s been the busiest year of my life, but I’m loving it, so I wouldn’t change it.”
He continued to say that there seems to be improvement in solving the timetable in regards to the race in Las Vegas next year.
“There are some things we would like to improve,” said Piastri. “The schedule is probably the biggest thing. We’ve already been told that it’s being worked on, so they’re listening, which is nice.”
