Piastri is willing to praise himself for such a season

Oscar Piastri, summarizing the results of his debut season at McLaren, which he rightly considers excellent, emphasized that he should also praise himself for this.

The Australian finished the championship in 9th place in the individual standings, earning 97 points, 92 of which were achieved over 13 stages in the second half of the year, when Oscar received a modernized MCL60 car – this happened at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Pundits, the racing press, fans and of course his teammates appreciated his pace, skill and ability to handle pressure, while he himself tried to learn as effectively as possible in every session of every weekend, critically analyzing his own actions and drawing conclusions.

He reached the podium for the first time in Japan, finishing third at the Suzuka classic circuit, and in the next stage in Qatar he won the sprint on Saturday, starting from pole, and then took second place in the race, where he started. 6th position. It’s also worth remembering that at circuits like Monza and Las Vegas, this became the circuit for the fastest laps.

“Of course it was a great season, with many great moments,” Australian publication Speedcafe quoted Oscar as saying. “I couldn’t have achieved any of this if the team hadn’t worked with the car and improved it in the way they did, and I have to admit that this is largely down to them.

But I must also praise myself, because it was I who had to show results at such moments. One of the things I am most proud of is the Silverstone round, where we prepared a competitive car and I was able to get the most out of it.

I don’t consider the race in Japan my best, but I was fast enough to be on the podium for the first time, and in Qatar we had the only chance to win anything all year, and we didn’t miss it. . This is also something to be proud of.

Of course there were more difficult weekends, so there is still a lot of work to be done. If we talk about the season as a whole, championships are not won in a few good weekends, I know that from my time in the youth series, so I have to show good results more often.

I hope I can show higher speeds from the start of the weekend. Although I showed good pace from the start of practice during the season finale in Abu Dhabi, I just made mistakes afterwards. Although I must admit that before qualifying I was usually a few tenths behind the leaders and racking my brains on what to do to achieve the desired result. However, when I fell behind in the second half of the year, it was more often due to my own mistakes, and not due to a lack of pace.

Overall I think the racing still needs some work. I feel like I’m getting better little by little, but I’m happy with how things are going and of course I know a lot more now than at the beginning of the year.”