Piastri: “Updates a step forward, but Mercedes is very strong. World Championship? New rules do not change hierarchies”

Piastri, optimism for Miami Formula 1 is finally back: Miami, weather permitting, will be the first opportunity for the teams to show the progress made at the factory in this month of forced break. It is a stage that McLaren awaits with trepidation: here Lando Norris achieved the first success of his career, while in 2025 the Woking team won both the Sprint and the GP, also edging out almost 40″ from all the competition; Furthermore, the Papayas showed signs of improvement in Suzuka, reaching their first podium thanks to Oscar Piastri, who competed on equal terms against George Russell’s superior Mercedes. In light of the progress seen in Japan, the work carried out in Woking and the updates anticipated by team principal Andrea Stella, the Australian showed optimism in the press conference that opened the weekend in Miami. According to him, the developments on the MCL40 are a step in the right direction, even if they probably won’t be enough to close the gap with Mercedes. Piastri’s words “We hope to be faster with the updates. But we have to wait to see exactly what the outcome will be. I think they are a step in the right direction, but I don’t think they are enough to challenge Mercedes already this weekend. We expect many other teams to bring updates, but I hope that ours are better”, this is his comment. “I think the team’s motivation and confidence are high. We are on a positive path again. It was nice to be able to close the Suzuka race with second place, it gave us some confidence back. We hope we can continue well by making a good step forward. What if with the new rules we can hope for the title? I don’t think they will change the hierarchies that much. If we look at the overall picture, they are very small changes. Clearly the Mercedes are very strong at the moment, we hope we can get close. I think the championship is good far from being done, we have to find performances rather quickly if we want to concretely enter the fight for the title. I know that we bring some new things this weekend and we will have others in the near future, let’s hope they are enough at least to put us in the fight.” Piastri then commented with moderate satisfaction on the changes to the regulations made in recent days: “I think the collaboration has been positive. Trying to make changes is certainly a step in the right direction. I don’t know how much it will help us in solving the problems, I don’t think it can solve them completely because we would have to completely rethink the structure of the power units, but it’s a step forward. There were many ideas after Suzuka, after the accidents we saw. But something had to be changed, it was clear. They listened to us and it’s positive, but we could have intervened until at a certain point we tried to change what was possible: from the simulator, some things seemed a little better, others didn’t seem different at all, but we’ll see how it goes on the track, the change seems sensible to me and I think it reduces the danger, even if it can’t totally eliminate an episode in which a driver has several kW less power than the person following him.”

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News
2026-05-01 03:32:00