By Ian Chadband
Oscar Piastri is enjoying every second of his late-season bloom at McLaren and is full of confidence about roaring to a second win in seven days at the Singapore Grand Prix.
“After an incredible weekend securing my second grand prix win, I’m ready to go for it again in Singapore,” declared the Australian.
Piastri says he can master the “incredibly demanding” heat and physical challenge of the floodlit Marina Bay track just a week after winning on another street circuit so brilliantly in Baku at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
“It’s a shorter circuit but an incredibly demanding one for the drivers. We have a good rhythm going in the team, and we now have to keep adding as many points as possible,” said the 23-year-old.
It was a year ago that, after being foiled by a qualifying red flag, Piastri produced a superb performance in Singapore to blast from 17th to seventh, a drive that bodes well for Sunday.
As does his remarkable run of recent form which, even if it may be too late to challenge for the championship itself, shows the Melburnian to be the most in-form driver in the whole of the F1 circus.
For Piastri has scored more points in the past seven grand prix than any of his opponents, including both his second-placed teammate Lando Norris and the reigning champ Max Verstappen, who, along with his Red Bull team, seem to have mislaid their mojo of late.
Piastri’s run since the end of June, starting at the Austrian Grand Prix, has been sensational – a sequence which reads 2nd, 4th, 1st, 2nd, 4th, 2nd and 1st.
He’s still 91 points behind leader Verstappen but that sort of form and consistency until the end of the season could still see him, with seven races left, move up from his current fourth place, 13 points behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and 32 adrift of Norris.
McLaren’s chief engineer Tom Stallard believes the young Victorian, coming off the best race of his career, is improving all the time.
“We’ve been working really hard with Oscar this year on race tyre management and we’ve made massive strides with that,” said former Olympic rower Stallard on the F1 Nation podcast
“It’s no longer a weakness, let’s say. I still think there’s plenty to learn. He’s improving all the time with his understanding of the tyres.”
Stallard smiled about Sunday’s memorable moment when Piastri ignored his advice about being cautious on his McLaren’s new tyres after a pit stop, only to make a sensational swoop to pass leader Leclerc the very next lap.
“I sort of said, ‘you know, remember in the first stint, we damaged the tyres a lot, attacking. And this time let’s be tactical’,” reflected Stallard.
“He knows me well enough also to know that that’s the scientist in me saying that, but the racer in me is saying ‘go and get him!’.
“And the racer in Oscar, fortunately, went and got him.”
AAP
