Piastri thinks "the last couple of races have been surprising in terms of the pace"
Having lost the lead in the championship standings, McLaren driver Oscar Piastri admits that "the last couple of races have been surprising in terms of the pace."
Lando Norris dominated qualifying to secure pole position for the Mexico City Grand Prix. The McLaren driver then had a great getaway from pole and held the lead through the first corner.
Based on the Friday’s long-run simulation, it was not surprising to see Norris drive off into the distance. Despite managing his tyres, his lead grew and grew from second-places Charles Leclerc.
The McLaren driver finished over 30 seconds ahead of the Ferrari driver, securing his sixth win of the season. In addition to that, he has also taken the lead in the Championship by just one point.
His team-mate Oscar Piastri endured a tough qualifying, and he lost further places at the start. Although he picked off the Red Bull of Yuki Tsunoda in the opening stages of the race to climb up to ninth, he spent the majority of the first half of the race stuck behind the Mercedes drivers.
He showed a more encouraging performance on Pirelli’s mediums which enabled him to climb back to P5. He even closed in the Haas of Ollie Bearman but got stuck and pitted a second time. On fresh tyres, he just ran out of time to chase down Bearman for the fourth place he desperately needed to hold onto the Championship lead.
Commenting on his performance in Mexico, Piastri said: "A difficult race. It felt like we had very good pace; it was just incredibly difficult to use it with the DRS train and getting stuck in dirty air, which was a shame. We did make some progress, and I learned a lot as well. We'll take those positives into Brazil."
Speaking of his current struggles behind the wheel of his MCL39, Piastri noted: "I think there's been... we have some evidence of where the pace is and what to do but I've got to drive the car very differently these last couple of weekends, which when it's been working well for you for the previous 18 [races] is a little bit difficult to kind of wrap your head around.
"I think the last couple of races has been surprising in terms of the pace. We tried a few things today and we'll have a look if that's what we were looking for," concluded Piastri.
