10/08/2024
NEWS STORY
Weeks after his maiden win, Oscar Piastri rues the "missed opportunities" of the opening half of the season, insisting "it could have been even better".
Fourth in the standings, ahead of Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez, the Australian youngster should be feeling pleased with himself, after all, recent events suggests he also has his experienced teammate rattled.
However, despite the Hungary win, Piastri believes that there's room for improvement.
"I think I've made good progress on things that I wanted to improve from last year," he tells Speedcafe. "Some of the goals I had from the end of last season, I think I've done a good job of tackling and made clear steps in some of those areas... I would say all of those areas.
"There's still of course room for improvement," he adds, "but I think it's been a good step forward."
Unlike last year, the 2024 McLaren has been competitive from the get-go.
"I think the big thing has been largely positive, from both a team point of view, and from a personal point of view," he says, reflecting on the opening half of the season. "The team have given Lando and I a car that's capable of winning races.
"The biggest positive obviously is that we've thrust ourselves into contention with a car that's incredibly quick," he adds. "That's really the biggest thing."
However, despite being fourth in the standings, due to a number of woeful strategic mistakes, and a couple of his own errors, it could have been even better, as he is the first to admit.
"There's kind of the feeling of a few missed opportunities with some things that were out of our control," he says. "Like Miami, the track limits in Austria, I mean, technically that one was in my control, but it wasn't really given how it was deleted. And then a few that were in our control, Silverstone being the most recent one; Canada a little bit, to an extent Imola with the qualifying penalty...
"So I think largely positive," he adds. "But I feel like there's potential to do even better, which is obviously a very exciting position to be in."