McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has opened up about Oscar Piastri’s abysmal race start at the Azerbaijan GP, his time with seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher, and what he expects from the Australian for the remainder of the 2025 F1 season.
After hitting the barrier at Turn 3 in the final segment of qualifying and bringing out the sixth and final red flag of the session, Piastri’s race weekend only took a turn for the worse. Lining up ninth on the grid, the Melbourne native suffered a dreadful launch off the line in Sunday’s race. Following a jump start and an ensuing anti-stall, the championship leader tumbled down to P20 even before Turn 1. Although he managed to get his MCL39 going again, Piastri broke late for Turn 5, locked his front-left tyre, and slid into the wall. As a result, he failed to finish a Grand Prix for the first time in 45 races.
Luckily for Piastri, however, Lando Norris failed to capitalise on his teammate’s retirement and only crossed the line in seventh place. Piastri’s lead in the championship has now come down from 31 to 25 points.
Piastri’s terrible race start a result of excessive eagerness
Speaking in a print media session after the F1 race, Andrea Stella reflected on Piastri’s poor start at the Azerbaijan GP and noted how uncharacteristic that blunder was on the Australian’s part. Emphasising how consistently the 24-year-old has performed in the season thus far, the Italian remarked that even world champions face setbacks from time to time and proceed to learn from them.
“So, I was saying before that these errors that we’ve seen on Oscar [Piastri]’s side, they are definitely uncharacteristic. I think Oscar has been the most solid driver in the 2025 campaign so far. And for what I could see, even with multi-champion drivers, sometimes you have a weekend in which it’s all about learning. And I think Oscar concentrated [on] some learning opportunities in this weekend, despite his will.”
Chalking his jump start up to excessive enthusiasm, Stella also explained that Piastri’s misjudgement of the available grip led to his subsequent lock-up and race-ending crash in Baku.
“The start, I think it’s just an excess of eagerness. I’m sure we have seen this now, and we won’t see this anymore. And in terms of the lock-up, similar to yesterday, he just misjudged the level of grip available. Perhaps this was compounded with a slow start, with a false start. We don’t know yet; it’s not relevant really.”
Stella confident Piastri would come back strongly
Despite Piastri’s botched start and retirement from the F1 Azerbaijan GP, the McLaren team principal didn’t appear concerned at all about how the nine-time race winner would reset before hitting the streets of Singapore.
Hailing his ability to bounce back swiftly from difficult moments as one of his biggest strengths since his junior formulae days, Andrea Stella boldly proclaimed that Piastri would show his mettle in the remaining races of the season.
“I think one of the strongest features of Oscar is how rapidly he learns, how rapidly he improves, and how he can come back stronger. That’s why he’s been so successful in every category. And I think that’s exactly what will happen in his Formula 1 career, and we will see it in the remainder of the season.”
Even Schumacher made his fair share of mistakes
Andrea Stella had the fortune of working with Michael Schumacher at Ferrari as his performance engineer between 2002 and 2006, when the German took three of his seven world titles.
Highlighting how even the seven-time champion wasn’t immune to such mistakes, Stella maintained that Piastri’s shunt in qualifying and the messy race start at the Azerbaijan GP wouldn’t prompt McLaren to change their perception of him. He also added that occasional mistakes like these can offer excellent learning opportunities.
“I’ve worked with multi-champion drivers and in a season, every season, even the most dominant, even one of the best drivers in the history of Formula 1, like Michael Schumacher, I have seen events like this. Events in which the most you take away [from the weekend] is the learning, because things become, for some reasons, difficult and as soon as you misjudge the grip available, you get highly punished.”
Stella not worried about Piastri’s “one-off weekend” in Azerbaijan
The errors in Baku were particularly notable because Piastri has demonstrated a collected approach this year, despite being in the championship fight with his McLaren teammate. He had only made two other mistakes of real consequence in the first 16 rounds of the season, spinning in the wet in Melbourne and his 10-second penalty at Silverstone for erratic driving behind the Safety Car.
Underscoring his consistency once again, an unbothered Andrea Stella stated that Piastri’s uncustomary underperformance during the Azerbaijan GP weekend won’t detract from the solid performances he has delivered on a regular basis throughout the ongoing F1 season.
“So, a one-off for what has been probably the most solid driver in this season and I think this concludes a streak of 44 races that Oscar has finished. I’m not sure. But just to say how solid, consistent he has been so far. A one-off weekend in which things don’t go your way and you ultimately have a loss to review. It is no surprise, no exception that we shouldn’t be worried about it, because this has happened to pretty much all champions, even the ones with the best track record.”
