After securing his fifth win of the season in Barcelona, Oscar Piastri heads into the F1 Canadian GP weekend on a high note.
The championship leader spoke in his print media session ahead of the Canadian GP and appeared determined to go into the weekend with his usual mindset. Stating: “I’m still gonna race how I always race.”
The Australian continued on to say: “I guess I’ll just try and race, like I said, how I always do. I think I normally try to race quite smart and keep myself out of trouble. A good saying is that it’s often better to still be in the race than prove that you were right in the situation. So I’ll try and keep that.”
Oscar Piastri currently leads the Formula One Drivers’ Championship, 10 points ahead of his teammate Lando Norris, and 49 points ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. Even with the points gap between them growing, Piastri still believes that one cannot rule out Verstappen for championship contention.
“I don’t think you can ever rule Max out. Obviously, the points gap now is a lot bigger, but I think he is always going to be a strong competitor, so I don’t think I could rule him out.” he expressed.
Piastri expects the challenge to be plenty in Canada
When asked about his expectations for the weekend and the battle at the top, Piastri expressed that it can be hard to know where the challenge will come from when the field is so competitive. Even so, the Australian still expects the situation in Canada to be a similar battle for the top as in the previous races.
“Yeah, I expect it to be how it has looked for most of the year. Max will probably be competitive again, this was a very competitive race for Mercedes last year, and I expect them to be quick again here. You never quite know whether that’s gonna be matching us, or challenging in qualifying especially, or attentive to back. Hopefully it’s not attentive to ahead, but you just never quite know exactly where the challenge is going to come from at the moment.“
The championship leader continued on to reflect on the consistency of the different teams this year and stated:
“Obviously, Max has probably been the most consistent across the year, but Mercedes looked strong at certain points. Monaco was a strong race for Ferrari, and there’s some similarities to here, but we saw that 12 months ago, it was not a great race for them. So I don’t know where the challenge will come from, but I think there will be plenty.”
Reflecting on last year’s Canadian GP, Verstappen won the race with a lead of 3.8 seconds, while Mercedes and McLaren battled behind him for podium contention. As Piastri mentioned, it was not a great race for Ferrari, as both drivers had to DNF and the weekend was quite the disaster for them. This year, the field still appears to be close and it will be interesting to see who can challenge the McLaren’s.
Bounced back in Spain
Additionally, the Australian was asked if it gives confidence for the next races knowing that after the blip in Monaco, he and his side of the garage was able to successfully bounce back at the Spanish GP.
Even though McLaren scored plenty points in Monaco, with Norris securing the race win and Piastri in P3, it was still a tricky weekend for the Aussie. He struggled to feel comfortable around the circuit and was not able to challenge his teammate for the win. However, Piastri came back stronger in Spain where he won the race by 2.4 seconds.
“Yes, definitely. I mean, I think we analysed pretty quickly from Monaco. Honestly, probably before we even started the race on Sunday, we pretty much knew where things had gone wrong during the weekend. In Spain, we did a very good job of rebounding and getting back to the level we wanted to be at. Starting with myself, firstly, but I think also the engineering around me.
I think we recognized there were some opportunities in Monaco that we rectified for Spain. And I think that was probably our strongest race in Spain, or certainly one of, through the year. Just from getting the car in a nice window for me, executing a good weekend, that was exactly what I wanted it to look like. Obviously, we tried to not have the blips, but I think we learned very quickly from one to another,” the championship leader expressed.
Piastri appears to have strong faith in his team and their ability to put everything together when it matters. The Australian will hope to fight for the win this weekend and secure his sixth win of the season.
