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Oscar Piastri believes McLaren and Mercedes are evenly matched in terms of pace. The Australian driver felt that the Woking team had to make more performance gains to eclipse the Silverstone Arrows in the pecking order.
Finishing fourth in the race, Oscar Piastri managed to outperform both Mercedes drivers at the Saudi Arabian GP. According to his cheeky social media caption, he was a Mercedes rear wing expert and had earned twelve points despite being stuck behind Lewis Hamilton. He felt the point the Brit had made was that it was easy to keep cars behind even if they were quicker on a circuit like the Jeddah Corniche.
When asked if he felt he had the edge over Mercedes to a certain extent with two race lines down now, Piastri replied:
“I think it's very, very even. I think we have different strengths and weaknesses for sure and I think qualifying made the difference. I think Lewis showed that if we qualify behind them there was a good chance we were going to be stuck behind them for the whole night. So I think it's very, very tight between us. And yeah, we need to do some work to try and jump them and catch the two teams ahead.”
Asked if he was surprised Hamilton pitted when he did, Oscar Piastri said:
“No, because he hadn't stopped yet. So I was was hoping he was gonna pit about 15 that's before he did but I think he started to struggle on the ties because I was was basically past him when he boxed so yeah, I think he you know he had to pit at some stage and that seemed like a a good time to do it.”
Oscar Piastri believes McLaren could have a weakness following other cars
Oscar Piastri felt that struggling to get past Lewis Hamilton in the race could have exposed one of their weaknesses. At a street track like Jeddah, the McLaren driver was stuck behind a significantly slower Mercedes for the majority of the race. He believes following cars in 2024 is not tougher than 2023, but their car lacked the straight line speed they needed to be more competitive.
Asked why he struggled to get past Hamilton, Oscar Piastri said:
“Yes, I mean, I think it kind of just showed a couple of weaknesses of ours, definitely. I was very relieved when he boxed out of the way. But yeah, just didn't quite have enough on the straights, mainly to get past.
Asked if it was more difficult to follow cars this year compared to last year, he said:
“It was definitely difficult to follow. I'm not sure it was necessarily worse than previously. But no I felt okay just we struggled for a straight line speed so that was the the best issue tonight.”
Asked what Zak Brown said to him after the race, Oscar Piastri said:
“Yeah, he said good drive. See you on the plane tonight, and yeah, I think that was a good day's work, definitely, so see you. Seem pretty happy which is good.”
Oscar Piastri is currently four points ahead of his teammate Lando Norris who has scored only 12 points so far. He feels team CEO Zak Brown is happy with his performance and congratulated him after the race.
With 16 points added to the team tally, McLaren are currently third in the championship. The Woking-based team has admitted being late on some of their development but are expected to be on a better footing than their engine supplier’s team. Mercedes trail their customer team by two points.
