Piastri hasn’t “mastered” F1 tyre management, but it’s “night and day” over 2023

Oscar Piastri reckons his ability to manage tyres in Formula 1 has undergone a “night-and-day” improvement over his 2023 rookie season, but feels there is still room to grow further.

Although Piastri impressed in his debut F1 season last year, the main criticisms of his maiden season involved his lack of experience with managing the Pirelli tyres through a race distance – which usually led to a race pace drop-off versus Lando Norris.

This had improved over the course of 2023, although the Australian’s biggest step in race stint management arguably came over the winter and thus the two McLaren drivers were much more evenly matched over 2024.

Norris nonetheless retained a slight upper hand when it came to overall race pace, leading Piastri to suggest that tyre management was still yet to be mastered after his second season.

“I don’t know if ‘mastered it’ is the word I would use. It’s much improved but not mastered,” Piastri explained to Autosport.

“I think there’s been two or three races this year where it’s still been – not to the same extent as last year, but still been challenging on that front, but I think it’s been a night-and-day improvement everywhere else.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren F1 Team

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“So I feel like I know much more proactively what I need to do to manage the tyres now, which you kind of have to learn the hard way, through experience, which could be quite painful. So I feel like I’ve made really big improvements there.”

Piastri revealed that although practice allowed the drivers to experiment, the stint lengths were so short that it was impossible to gain meaningful experience of tyre management beyond the races.

He said that, having taken ‘painful’ lessons through 2023 in understanding the limits of the Pirelli tyre, he was now glad to have taken the hit in his rookie season to lay the foundations for the future.

“It’s very difficult [to work on] because you can only do it in the races. I mean, you can try and do it in practice and put the building blocks in,” he added.

“But in practice you never quite know if it’s going to work or not, because obviously the runs we do are nowhere near a race distance.  

“So some of the techniques you can use and some of the things you want to apply, you can apply, but they don’t always give you the clear answers that you’re after. Only the races can do that.

“So it’s pretty much trying it in the races, which is very difficult and obviously very painful at times, because if you get it wrong, you obviously can’t just push restart and try again. That’s the race result.  

“And yeah, that was a bit frustrating at times last year, but I feel like, again, it’s been a good improvement to this season, so I’m happy to have gone through those experiences.”