Jenson Button notes “the big difference” he’s seen in Oscar Piastri in F1 2025
Jenson Button highlighted a notable change in Oscar Piastri following his Miami victory.
2009 F1 world champion Jenson Button has praised Oscar Piastri’s ability to “control a race” from the front after winning the Miami Grand Prix.
Piastri made it a hat-trick of wins to extend his lead in the F1 drivers’ championship to 16 points over McLaren teammate Lando Norris.
The crucial point in the race was the start, where Norris was forced off the track by Max Verstappen.
This incident promoted Piastri to second and gave him the first opportunity to get past Verstappen.
By the time Piastri and Norris overtook Verstappen, the Australian had a nine-second lead at the front of the field.
Norris reduced this to four seconds by the end of the race, suggesting he had a small pace advantage.
During the post-race interviews in parc ferme, Button noted the “big difference” he’s noticed in Piastri this year.
Button said to Piastri: “For me, the big difference that I see from you from last year to now is the race pace.
“How you control a race, it seems that when we put Oscar in the lead of a Grand Prix, there’s no looking back, you control the pace from the time you get into the lead until the chequered flag.”
Piastri replied: “Yeah, I mean, I think the first stint was really, really strong and then on the hards I was honestly struggling a little bit. So, it was a good thing that I built that gap in the first stint.
“I think towards the end I started to get things a bit more under control, but there’s still definitely some things to work on from this afternoon.
“So, very happy with the win, very happy with the points, but constantly got to keep learning, so, very happy to be leaving Miami on top.”
Button lauds “very clever” Piastri
Button recognised Piastri’s prowess in wheel-to-wheel combat.
The Sky F1 pundit was impressed with how Piastri forced Verstappen onto the dirty line, ultimately resulting in a mistake that gave him the race lead.
On the other hand, Norris found it harder to get by Verstappen, losing even more time.
“It’s really interesting because Oscar really squeezes him. Max puts it on the inside, normally you would drive down the outside and the guy on the inside will pull to the left as much as he could,” Button added.
“But Max is getting squeezed into the apex, which is putting him into a dirtier part of the track. That was very clever from Oscar.”
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