The Australian driver spoke after placing eighth in the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix, while his teammate Lando Norris finished sixth, with Lewis Hamilton coming in between the two McLaren drivers in seventh place.
This came after Norris and Piastri qualified seventh and eighth for the race, revealing the initial hierarchy of the 2024 F1 season.
Although McLaren had a difficult start to their 2023 season and had to wait until midseason for improvements after an impressive upgrade package, their start in 2024 has been better, although not outstanding.
Based on what we have seen, McLaren is now in a battle with Mercedes for the third-best position, behind Red Bull in the lead and Ferrari in pursuit.
Piastri spoke to the media in Bahrain after the race on Saturday, commenting on his performance: “Compared to last year, it’s not a bad way to start the year. The pace was more or less what I expected. We were very close to Mercedes, Ferrari seems to be slightly ahead, and Red Bull is clearly ahead. We’ll see what the next few circuits have in store for us. Some faster layouts and different tarmac. Hopefully, they will suit us better. Personally, I think it was a decent race. So yeah, I’m pretty satisfied.”
During qualifying, the top five teams (Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, Aston Martin) were separated by less than a second in Q3. However, Red Bull extended their lead during the race, with Max Verstappen finishing over 20 seconds ahead of his teammate Sergio Perez in second place, and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz over 2.5 seconds behind in third.
The highest-placed McLaren driver, Norris, finished nearly 50 seconds behind Verstappen. However, Piastri believes that the gap to Red Bull was expected. He stated, “I think Red Bull’s pace was more realistic than what we expected. They seem to have a similar pace to last year, with a similar gap. It’s not a huge surprise, to be honest. In the races last year, they were always faster than in qualifying. But maybe they’re still not as far ahead as we initially feared at the start of testing, but they’re still quite far ahead.”
Norris, in McLaren’s post-race media briefing, added, “It was a challenging race, but I think we still had a good pace and it was definitely an improvement from last year, so I think we can be happy as a team. The wind affected us a bit today. It changed a lot compared to the past few days, and it felt worse in some corners. But we made progress, and it was the best we could have hoped for today. A good start to the year.”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella expressed satisfaction with the start of the season, stating, “It’s great to begin the season with a strong performance here in Bahrain. We have been reliable, and we were fast enough to compete with Mercedes today, which allowed us to score valuable points at a track that doesn’t necessarily suit our car’s characteristics. Oscar and Lando drove very well and consistently this evening. They didn’t make any mistakes in challenging conditions, especially on the Hard tires, and they got our team off to a good start in 2024.”