McLaren team boss Andrea Stella says Oscar Piastri's race pace will improve with time as the Aussie "cashes in on his learnings".
Piastri claimed in Japan last weekend the first podium of his budding career in F1.
However, the McLaren young gun, who had started second, was outpaced in the race by teammate Lando Norris who finished second at Suzuka behind race winner Max Verstappen.
Piastri regained track position after the first round of pitstops but was eventually ordered to wave through Norris given his inferior race pace and tyre degradation struggles.
"I just wasn’t quick enough at certain points of the race," Piastri admitted after the race. "These high-deg races are probably the biggest thing I need to try and work on at the moment.
"I think it’s still quite fresh for me; obviously in all the junior racing before this, there’s no race just like this. The only way you can learn from it is by just doing the races."
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Stella agreed, emphasizing that race pace, unlike absolute speed, isn't a gift but rather an ability that is acquired through time and experience.
"I think when it comes to race pace, it’s not like you learn race pace and then it’s a set of skills that you deploy for every race," explained the McLaren F1 boss.
"So I think that’s why it’s a bit of a journey and it takes time because every situation presents its own characteristics.
"I’m sure Oscar will have learned things and actually I think towards the end he was already better than he was in the second stint.
"It’s just systematic work of cashing in on all the possible learning. There’s not one-off learning that is applicable to every situation, it’s just a rookie element.
"But the first thing I would take is always the outright speed, which is what we saw (in qualifying), because when you have that, race pace and all these things are much easier to work on.
"But finding the edge on a single lap in Suzuka like was saw is more difficult to sort of work together with your engineers, that’s a gift."
McLaren's double podium result at Suzuka has reduced the team's gap to Aston Martin in F1's Constructors' standings to 49 points.
The battle is therefore on for P4 in the championship, but Stella said there was no need to rally the troops to spur on team papaya.
"I don’t even want to think that there’s anybody at McLaren that needs this kind of carrot to push any harder, because I trust and I believe that everyone is pushing at the fastest reasonable sustainable pace," he said.
"That’s what I want and that’s what I think is happening.
"If you start thinking of ‘We need to finish fourth’, everyone will say ‘Andrea, we know already, you don’t need to tell us, we don’t have to declare this to the world, we’re just going as fast as we can’. That’s the attitude."
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