Oscar Piastri believes that the bumpy asphalt surface of the Austin circuit will have a negative impact on the behavior of the McLaren car, making it unlikely that the team will be able to repeat the results that the team was able to show at the two previous races to see. stages of the championship.
In Japan and Qatar, Piastri and his teammate Lando Norris finished on the podium, while the Australian also won the sprint in Losail on Saturday, allowing McLaren to earn more points over the two race weekends than any other team, including Red Bull Racing.
This was also made possible by the features and characteristics of the Japanese and Qatari circuits, and Oscar highlighted this when discussing what McLaren could count on at the American circuit, where the circuit is clearly less suitable for the MCL60 car. Furthermore, it has never had a smooth finish, for which it has been criticized more than once.
“COTA is a very cool track, there are a lot of different types of corners and a lot of elevation changes,” Piastri, who will compete in Austin for the first time, is quoted in the Australian publication Speedcafe. “We’ll see how competitive we can be, but I don’t think we’ll do as well here as we did the last two weekends.”
One of the factors is the unevenness of the surface. In Qatar the asphalt is very smooth, and there are many fast corners and almost no slow corners, and we liked that. I think we’ll hit some bumps in the road in Austin. I mean, bumps don’t help anyone, but I think they could cause us some trouble.
Moreover, there are many more slow corners here than in Qatar or even Japan, and that will also have an effect. But I don’t hope too much, and I don’t think we’ll go back too far. When I say we won’t be in as good shape this weekend as we were in the two previous stages, I mean this: I hope we can still compete with Ferrari and Mercedes.
I see that Mercedes has prepared some technical innovations for Austin, so we will see what speed they will be capable of. They were also fast in Qatar, but I think we were probably second only to Red Bull in terms of speed. But this weekend it’s unlikely we’ll be at the same level. And even if we do that, we will be much closer to Ferrari and Mercedes in terms of speed.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
