Oscar Piastri reveals driving style rethink as slump continues at Mexico City GP
“Yesterday, it became obvious that after the session that there were a few things I need to change pretty majorly in how I was driving.”
Oscar Piastri has conceded he’s been forced to change his driving style after his recent slump continued at the Mexico City Grand Prix.
Piastri qualified eighth at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez as his poor run of form continued.
The Australian was over 0.6s behind McLaren teammate Lando Norris, who stormed to pole position.
Piastri made a poor start to the race, dropping down to ninth on the opening lap.
He managed to recover to fifth in the end, getting ahead of Kimi Antonelli through the pit stop phase.
He then pulled off an aggressive move on George Russell at Turn 1.
It wasn’t enough to stay in the lead of the championship, with Piastri now just one point behind Norris with four rounds to go.
Reflecting on his tricky weekend in Mexico, Piastri acknowledged that he now needs to adjust how he’s driving the McLaren.
“There was a lot of fight out there, yes. Difficult to know. I felt like the whole race I was right behind someone,” Piastri said.
“I was just struggling with the dirty air so that was pretty difficult. I think for me the biggest thing is trying to learn the things that I want to learn today. Yesterday, it became obvious that after the session that there were a few things I need to change pretty majorly in how I was driving.
“Today was firstly trying to limit damage but also trying to learn some things about that.
“If I’ve made some progress with that then I will be happy. When your teammate wins the race, finishing fifth is nothing that extravagant.”
Piastri needs to ‘drive differently’
After his win at Zandvoort, Piastri was 34 points ahead of Norris in the standings.
His lead has been wiped out entirely after a tricky run of results.
Piastri crashed out of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after a disastrous opening lap.
He finished a distant fifth at the Circuit of the Americas, well behind Norris.
Piastri admitted he’s “trying to change things up” in a bid to rediscover his form.
“I’ve just had to drive very differently the last couple of weekends,” he added. “I’ve not driven differently when I should have. That’s been a little bit strange to get my head around because I’ve been driving exactly the same that I have all year.
“It’s just these last couple of weekends the car or the tyres have required quite a different way of driving. I’ve just not really gone to that. I’ve tried a few things with trying to change things up a little bit today.
“Once we analyse if it’s effective or not that will hopefully see some progress.”
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