Piastri: Tyre management improved but not mastered

As a rookie in 2023, Piastri impressed with the pure pace he showed, but struggled in races as he usually dropped back compared to teammate Lando Norris.

However, in 2024, Piastri emerged as the better racer at McLaren, and while he admitted he has improved in managing the Pirelli tyres, he still needed more time to be fully on top of them.

Quoted by Motorsport.com and when asked about his understanding of the tyres, Piastri said: "I don't know if 'mastered it' is the word I would use. It's much improved but not mastered.

"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.

"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," he explained.

Piastri pointed out that free practice sessions over a grand prix weekend are not enough to develop the full idea of how to manage the tyres because the race simulations teams go through during practice are short compared to a full race distance.

He added: "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.

"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," the Australian concluded.

Piastri won two races in 2024, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and the Hungarian Grand Prix. He finished fourth in the F1 drivers' championship.