What's transforming Piastri into a credible F1 title threat

Oscar Piastri is two-for-two so far in 2025 for turning around past weaknesses and establishing himself as a credible Formula 1 title threat. 

Piastri set himself the goal of fighting for the world championship this season, and to do that knew he needed stronger qualifying form, to make a step on race pace, and generally take better control of his race weekends.

Even with the caveat of a two-race sample set being limited, the early evidence of 2025 is that Piastri is making good on that commitment. Because Australia and China were examples of weaker Piastri weekends in the past - yet he has looked a bona fide frontrunner in both. 

Beyond the halo result of a first F1 pole, and of course the win, in China, the details of Piastri's first two weekends are hugely encouraging for him. He looks to have found a couple of tenths in qualifying relative to Norris and his race performance has rocketed from no-man's land to right where he needs to be. 

McLaren boss Andrea Stella mentioned after the Shanghai race that he could "remember after the race having a chat 1-1 outside one of these hospitalities and scratching our heads a little bit and saying, 'There's a lot to pick from learnings from this race'" last year. 

"If you go back and look at the race 12 months ago, I think he will have finished at least 30 seconds from Lando and this weekend he was at the top level," said Stella.

Shanghai was a great point of comparison. Piastri called it his most "complete" win so far and more "satisfying" and you can see why because the whole weekend was his most convincing so far in F1, and a world apart from the same race last year.

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"It was a big turnaround," Piastri said. "It was a track that I had a lot of homework to do from 12 months ago.

"Yes, it's changed a lot with the resurfacing, but there's still a lot of challenges around just the layout, regardless of the surface.

"It's been very satisfying to have probably my most complete weekend in F1 this weekend be at a track I struggled the most at last year. So very pleased with the hard work that not just I’ve done, but the whole team around me: the engineers on my side of the garage, but everyone at McLaren for giving us a car that's much stronger than it was 12 months ago here, but also being able to chip in where they can and try to help me improve.

"It's been a really nice show of progress in 12 months, but there's still going to be challenges along the way. It's just a nice confidence boost at the moment."

There was already a good step made in Australia, too. Perhaps it's the fact it is Piastri's home race, but it has seemingly gone unnoticed that he was fairly unremarkable there in his first two years, qualifying more than a quarter of a second off Norris both times and being a long way adrift in both races.

At both tracks, Piastri has made a chunky step in his qualifying pace relative to Norris and been massively more competitive on Sunday too. One of his big weaknesses last year was having anonymous weekends where he was never in the pole fight and in no-man's land in the race while Norris chased the leaders.

Piastri now looks fast enough to be right there in qualifying, to pressure Norris into mistakes, or even to beat him. In races he seems to have made a step on tyre management on both axles, given the different conditions and challenge of Australia and China.

Stella also reckons that Piastri's read of a grand prix, when he needs to ask questions and what to ask, has taken a step too. This is part of the evolving racecraft toolkit that comes with experience.

"His racecraft, his overall speed, his questions relating to the race were very punctual, the right question at the right time," said Stella. 

"He's improved over the winter, there's been quite a lot of work, a long list of opportunities, a long list of races that you review: ‘Here we should do this, do this, these adaptations'."

Stella has always rated Piastri's capacity to learn and 'cash in' on opportunities to improve, and it has been the foundation of Piastri's strong start this year. 

He's either hounding Norris like he was in Australia, or he can lead from the front like he was in China. And that's a significant factor. Because not only does Norris have things that he needs to get on top of in the McLaren, which he and the team admit can be a little bit more punishing for his natural driving style, the pressure from the other side of the garage is only increasing from Piastri.

The McLaren fight was always likely to come down to two massively exciting factors: how close Piastri can get on the days where Norris hooks it up and is other-worldly fast, and what happens when the two really race each other properly. 

Norris appears to still have the fractionally higher peak, but can he string it together in this car, and in a championship battle? And for Piastri, who has historically shown a greater killer instinct in attack, and a steely resolve in defence, will this early season progress turn him into a consistent qualifying threat?

Suzuka will be another great test as that's a track where Piastri had a similarly weak performance relative to Norris last year. 

If he can come through that with a similar sign of progress before heading to tracks where Piastri's been a lot closer, or even better, like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, then Piastri's title credentials will be further validated and his bid could really start to build some momentum.