Oscar Piastri handed 'speed-of-light' boost in learning new McLaren 'technique'

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has explained the reasons why Oscar Piastri was again adrift of team-mate Lando Norris at the end of qualifying for the São Paulo Grand Prix.

Piastri went into the session at Interlagos aiming to recover from his crash in the sprint a few hours previously, when he dipped the front-left wheel of his MCL39 onto a wet kerb at the end of the Senna S, which sent him into a spin, crashing into a barrier on the opposite side of the circuit.

Norris continued his perfect weekend by claiming pole position for the grand prix, whilst Piastri finished 0.375s adrift, with Kimi Antonelli in his Mercedes and Ferrari's Charles Leclerc also ahead of him on the grid.

There was an element of regression for Piastri, akin to the performance he encountered across the United States and Mexico City Grands Prix weekends. After the latter, he was at a loss to explain the disparity between himself and Norris.

After starting relatively strongly on Friday, Stella has explained why Piastri then struggled in grand prix qualifying, in particular. 

"First of all, I have to say that Oscar, from day one, has been very competitive, very fast," said Stella, speaking to the media, including RacingNews365.

"The speed was there, the comments about the car were completely different to Mexico and Austin, so we were in a really good place.

"If anything, the conditions [on Saturday] saw much less grip on track [compared to Friday]. We can see that the lap times are quite a bit slower, [and it is] more difficult to put a lap together."

Expanding further, Stella added: "To some extent, we went back to a similar regime, so it's just [about] some of the techniques required to drive the car fast. They resemble the technique that was required in Austin and Mexico.

"Oscar is learning this technique, embedding this technique, but it may take a bit more time to fully exploit naturally, especially when in conditions [like on Saturday], you have, in addition, the fact that at every corner you don't know exactly how much grip you're going to find because of the wind.

"This corrupted even Lando in his first attempt in Q3. I think for Lando, in this regime of low grip, it's just a little more natural to do the things that are normal for him to do, and actually produce some lap time.

"It's just for some reason, in the last three events we have had just low-grip conditions. It's not like you put on a soft tyre and you have so much braking and traction performance.

"You just have to get the car to do what you want while the car is sliding. For Oscar, this is a little bit of a learning process, but we know that Oscar learns at the speed of light, and I'm expecting Oscar will have a very strong race."