Piastri reflects on stellar F1 season, highlights two standout wins

In a season that has seen Oscar Piastri cement his status as one of F1’s brightest stars, the 24-year-old Australian has singled out the standout moments so far of his 2025 campaign.

Piastri has been one of the season’s defining figures, collecting six wins and four pole positions to sit nine points clear of teammate Lando Norris in the drivers’ standings.

The pair’s performances have cemented McLaren as the team to beat, with the papaya duo taking 11 wins between them ahead of F1’s summer break.

Reflecting on his breakthrough year in an interview with Autosport, Piastri said the opportunity to regularly fight for race victories has been a career highlight in itself.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” he said. “Firstly, it’s pretty rare that anyone gets this opportunity in their F1 career. So [I’ve] been enjoying being able to fight for wins pretty much week in, week out.

“I feel like I was developing my strengths in my first couple of years, and I feel like this year they’ve come together much more often.”

Bahrain and Barcelona: The Benchmarks

Pressed to pick a favourite, Piastri singled out Bahrain as his most complete weekend to date, while pointing to Barcelona as another near-perfect display.

“Bahrain was just a really, really strong weekend from start to finish,” he explained. “Qualifying was really strong, the race as well… that was the biggest gap that I had for the year.

“Barcelona was a similar kind of weekend. I pick those two just on pure performance.”

While those two races stood out for their dominance, Piastri admitted Miami was memorable for more personal reasons.

“I think most kind of emotional was probably Miami, just because it was a bit unexpected,” he said. “It was a fun race.”

Qualifying: The Key Step Forward

A major difference in Piastri’s 2025 campaign has been his transformation on Saturdays, something he admits was a weakness last year.

“I was making a lot of races more difficult than I wanted to last year, so trying to improve that has naturally made a lot of races look quite different to what I had last year,” he explained.

“That was kind of a big focus point of ‘how do I improve that result’. But obviously you can’t just go into it saying, ‘I’m going to qualify better this year’. You need to work out how.

“That’s been a big focus, but I think a lot of the gains I’ve tried to make in chasing that have also transferred to race day as well.”

He credited his long-standing partnership with race engineer Tom Stallard as crucial to those gains.

“Finding exactly what I need, then Tom gets a better understanding of what I need… that relationship has definitely evolved as well. And I think it’s definitely at the strongest it’s ever been.”

McLaren’s Title Challenge and that “One Rule”

McLaren’s MCL39 has emerged as one of the season’s most competitive machines, though its behaviour at the limit raised eyebrows early in the year. Piastri, however, remains untroubled.

“Our race runs were always very strong, but in qualifying sims, we were genuinely struggling… I’ve been pretty happy with how it’s been. For me, it’s not been a big concern,” he said.

As McLaren’s title challenge intensifies, much has been made of how the team manages two drivers in direct contention.

Piastri downplayed talk of strict “papaya rules,” insisting the message is simple.

“It is literally one rule, which is, don’t crash into each other,” he said. “That’s kind of an unsaid rule in every team.”

Calm in the Championship Hunt

Though leading his first F1 championship battle, Piastri draws on experience from junior series to stay composed – even with the added complication of fighting his own teammate.

“In F1 you’ve got the added complication of strategy… that’s been quite a different mentality in some ways,” he admitted. “But ultimately, the position I’m in feels very familiar, trying to secure a championship.”

• Read also: McLaren will let Piastri and Norris shape F1 title celebrations

Asked whether he looks ahead to the season’s conclusion or takes each round as it comes, Piastri kept his approach simple.

“It sounds boring, and kind of is boring in some ways, but it is very true. You can’t worry about what’s going to happen in Abu Dhabi… leaving each weekend knowing that I’ve done the absolute maximum I can… that’s all you can ask for,” he said.

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