Oscar Piastri addresses 'pretty tough 15-year' F1 testing discovery

Oscar Piastri believes F1 drivers are having to undo driving traits honed from their earliest karting days due to the new energy demands.

In order to prevent the batteries becoming fully drained on a straight, drivers are having to lift off earlier and then continue off throttle before coasting into the corner to save energy.

At a track such as Bahrain, the heavy need for LiCo is not as great owing to the multiple heavy braking zones, but energy out of the corners is still being depleted faster than in 2025.

As such, Piastri has explained how "having driven a certain way for the last 15 years" since his first steps into karting, it is now having to be unlearned to cope with the demands.

"I think it is just complex, there are a lot of things that we've never had to do before, and they are challenging by nature, because some of them are not very instinctive," Piastri told media, including RacingNews365. 

"When you've driven a certain way for the last 15 years, it is pretty tough to undo some of those things, especially when some of them are lifting on straights, or stuff like that.

"Obviously, as a driver, you never want to be lifting at any point, but even without some of the challenges that we've got and the things we need to address. Ultimately, the cars are slower and have less downforce and probably more power out of the corners, so they are always going to feel difficult to drive.

"They are different to last year, but in certain conditions, the cars don't feel that different. In some conditions, I think they will, and it'll change a lot from track to track.

"It still feels, in terms of grip, like an F1 car should, we've got a crazy amount of power out of the corners - and it wasn't like we didn't have much power before, so I think that is pretty tough to manage at times.

"But we also need to remember the cars we had last year at some tracks were the fastest F1 cars ever, so anything that feels worse than that is always going to be as not as fun at the start.

"It still feels sensible, there are just a lot of other things which are very different, besides the grip level."