Piastri sees McLaren ‘in the fight’ for F1 championship

For Oscar Piastri, it's a tall order, but the Australian driver believes McLaren is a genuine contender for the F1 world title this season.

McLaren currently sits third in F1’s Constructors’ standings with 212 points while Red Bull leads the field with six wins and 301 points, with Ferrari racking up 252 points.

But the consistency delivered by Piastri and teammate Lando Norris in the last three races has surpassed that of its rivals, while on aggregate, McLaren has accumulated six podiums so far this year, including Norris’ maiden F1 win in Miami.

As a testimony to the quality of team papaya’s line-up, Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko reckoned that McLaren currently has the strongest pairing on the grid.

“They are young and they are hungry,” Marko said in Montreal, referencing Norris and Piatsri. “Currently, they get along well and work well together.”

• Read also: Norris says ‘two is better than one’ in battle against Red Bull

McLaren’s impressive streak hasn’t yet jeopardized Red Bull’s lead, but team boss Christian Horner is convinced his outfit won't have a repeat this year of their runaway victory in 2023.

Horner now sees both Ferrari and McLaren as serious threats in the championship fight, and Piastri agrees.

“It'd be tough, definitely, but I think we're in the fight,” Piastri said, quoted by Speedcafe.

“I think we scored the most points this weekend as a team, not by much, but it's definitely a really good result for us.

“We've both been very consistent in the last few weekends, and I think across some very different circuits; we've been strong at all of them.

“Still some things to tidy up, and we're talking about little things, but when you're fighting for championships, little things go a long way,” he added.

“It's going to be very tough and obviously Red Bull has got a bit of a head start. I don't know how far behind Ferrari we are now…

“I definitely think we're in the mix, but it'll be a big second half of the year to make it happen.”

To try and uphold its momentum, McLaren will implement a series of updates on its MCL38 at upcoming events, although the scale of the developments won’t be comparable to what the team introduced last year during the same period.

“For the coming races, we will have some upgrades, but they won't be a single kind of big upgrade like we have seen over the last 12 months,” explained team boss Andrea Stella.

“This is more some individual components where we found a little bit of performance and rather than waiting to deploy everything together once ready we take it track side.

“So I won't say what but we will see some new stuff coming over the few coming races.”

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