Oscar Piastri has described his maiden Formula 1 season as a "baptism of fire" after the chaotic Dutch Grand Prix. Melbourne-native Piastri came home ninth for a sixth points scoring result (including the Belgian Sprint) of his debut campaign and has shown strong flashes of speed alongside Lando Norris. The tricky conditions at Zandvoort was just the latest time a Grand Prix has been affected by wet weather in 2023, with rain impacting a number of races, including the closing stages in Monaco. In addition, at the beginning of the season, Piastri was faced with a series of unfamiliar tracks, such as his home Australian circuit, Miami and a Sprint weekend in Azerbaijan, and feels that he has been thrown in at the deep end.
Piastri's learning curve
"It was chaotic, definitely, but to have two cars in the points is a decent afternoon," Piastri told media including RacingNews365. "There were maybe a few opportunities that we could have done a bit more with, and also a couple of mistakes from my side that certainly didn't help our cause. "There are lot of things from me to learn, we've had a lot of crazy races so it's been a bit of a baptism of fire in my rookie season, but it is all part of the learning process. "I didn't help myself with the crash in practice, and every day from [the Dutch GP weekend] has been a massive learning point, and ideally I wouldn't have put it in the wall to learn how much that damaged the rest of the weekend." Piastri has impressed during his first half-season in Grand Prix racing, but the Australian remains committed to self-improvement and eradicated small errors. "In the first part of the season, there were still so many things I had to learn in terms of racing, gelling with the car and now I am in a much more comfortable place than at the start of the year," he explained. "There are still a couple of mistakes here and there, and certainly in races like this, the only way to learn from them and know what to do is by experience. "I feel like it has definitely been a learning curve in some areas, but I think the confidence and in my ability and the car and team is still [high]."
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