Oscar Piastri: Our gap will probably widen

Ahead of the Chinese leg of the season, the McLaren team are making no secret of their fears that the MCL38 car’s shortcomings will appear on the track in Shanghai, and Oscar Piastri was asked to explain what this is about.

“Our car doesn’t handle slow corners very well, and that’s been going on for a while, and there’s a lot of them on this track,” Oscar replied. – The MCL38 works most effectively on high-speed sections, but in Shanghai there are no particularly fast corners, except maybe the 7th and 8th, but that’s all.

But we’ll see. Although we say we will face challenges, we are at least around the same level as Mercedes and Aston Martin, and at times we have even managed to get quite close to Ferrari. But this weekend our gap will probably widen a bit.

But I think we will still be in the top ten, and if not, something has gone wrong. However, I foresee that our competitiveness will be slightly lower than in the two previous phases.

I have never raced at this track before, but this morning I cycled past it with great interest and really enjoyed it. The ring looks interesting, there are several unique turns, for example, the 1st and 2nd – such turns cannot be found anywhere else in the world. At the same time, we only have one more hour’s training to adapt to the track, after which we immediately qualify for the sprint.

The guys who have been racing in Formula 1 for a long time have experience of driving this circuit, albeit in cars from previous generations, but since the last time the Chinese Grand Prix was held in 2019 it is still better than when the race was supposed to take place in Shanghai a few years ago, when I had not yet participated in Formula 1.

But at least I’m not the only one who has no experience performing on this song!..”