Piastri’s debut with McLaren showcased his remarkable skills, quickly equaling seasoned drivers and proving his worth from the outset.
McLaren F1 race engineer Tom Stallard revealed how Oscar Piastri matched the team’s main drivers within 10 laps in the simulator, even with a system malfunction.
Piastri joined the Formula 1 grid with McLaren last season after serving as a reserve driver at Alpine.
Stallard, Piastri’s race engineer and McLaren’s performance director, offered insight into his first session with the team upon signing, revealing that the Formula 3 and Formula 2 champion quickly familiarized himself with their simulator and matched the pace of their race drivers within a few laps, without any reference points.
A problem with lap deltas left him without a time target on the steering wheel, yet Stallard revealed Piastri matched all the key reference points of their current drivers without any feedback.
“We set a goal to make the most of Oscar as soon as he arrived.”
“In fact, one of the most impressive things Oscar did the first time he worked with the team was driving the simulator, where they encountered a problem causing the lap delta not to work—the lap delta is the number on the dashboard that shows how fast he’s going compared to his best lap.”
“In under 10 laps, he was matching the lap times of our race drivers, hitting all the braking points.”
“He adjusted everything himself, with no feedback, incredibly quickly, and he has this ability to understand it all on his own.”
“As a race engineer, one of your tasks is often not to disturb him unnecessarily. If you say too much, it can create noise in the driver’s head—and that’s true for any driver, not just Oscar.”
“Drivers themselves have a process of improvement, development, and testing, and what you really want to do is support that. Oscar has this ability to improve himself without us overloading him with too much information.”
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Piastri’s Swift Impact: Matching McLaren’s Best from Day One Piastri’s Swift Impact: Matching McLaren’s Best from Day One
