Oscar Piastri leads the driver’s championship heading into the F1 Spanish GP, but Monaco was a messy weekend for the Australian, which has left him wanting more in Barcelona.
Monaco closed the championship gap between the McLaren teammates to just three points, with Piastri finding the wall in during FP2. He struggled to feel comfortable around the winding streets, and it cost him the fight for a win.
But Barcelona is a new weekend, and the championship leader doesn’t want to let the struggles of Monaco bleed into a new weekend.
He told F1 about his difficulties in Monaco.
“It was a bit more of a struggle than most weekends, probably the most challenging of the year so far, but I think we’ve already understood why to a pretty good extent.”
Piastri acknowledged that no championship fight is going to be easy, and coming away from a bad weekend, P3 is still a good place to be.
“Like I’ve said before, you’re going to have tough moments in a championship, not every day is going to be perfect, but as long as you can learn the lessons then that’s what counts – especially at this part of the year.”
Making the most of bad weekends
With street circuits like Monaco, building up throughout the weekend is the trick, and Piastri admitted that was his missing step.
“You obviously want to be strong at the back end of the year when the pressure really ramps up. So, a slightly more tricky weekend, I think we got on top of things eventually, but it’s not a track where you can find that big step once things are good – you kind of need to gradually build and that’s what I was missing a bit.”
The Australian remained positive about the season and the opportunities ahead. Barcelona is a very different track to Monaco, and offers a chance to reset in the final stages of the European triple header.
He confessed that the season so far had been a dream.
“Obviously the results have been good, where I am in the championship is obviously great, but I think in general it’s been just a very satisfying start to the year.”
“We’ve had a lot of very strong weekends – a couple of blips here and there, of course – but it’s impossible to go eight weekends without a couple of things you can improve on. Very happy with how things have been going, and hopefully we can keep it that way.“
