The first weekend of the 2025 Formula One season ended with a broken heart at Oscar Piastri. Hometown's favourite was second in the Australian Grand Prix, but slid into the grass in rainy conditions late in the race, knocking him out of the podium contest. Piastri managed to get back on track and save the finish with points, but he didn't want to start a 2025 campaign in front of home fans.
Piastri rebounded with a “satisfactory” and “complete” victory at the Chinese Grand Prix.
Piastri took pole position, LED wires off the wires, and won in front of teammate Lando Norris, giving McLaren F1 history to give McLaren their 50th 1-2 result. The defending constructor champion has a tremendous start in 2025, with Norris winning in Australia and now winning in Shanghai.
“Yeah, I'm very pleased,” Piastri began. FIA Press Conference. “Obviously, I think it's always a pretty good day when you cross the line first, but that's obvious, but for me, this was not just a race, but a weekend.
“You know, I think the two wins I had before were very different. I think this was the most complete. So I'm very pleased with the efforts of the entire team this weekend,” the Australian driver added. “I think we started with a car that was fast but sometimes pretty tricky, and I think we did a good job working on it, and taking away this outcome is the perfect end of the weekend.”
While many expected high levels of tire degradation that drivers would have to implement a two-stop strategy, Piastri was one of many in the top 10 and did one-stop race work. Piastri started with a medium compound and switched to hard, then ran the final 42 laps of the race with that set of tires for victory.
The Australian driver admitted he was “pleasant and surprised” that the hard compound had not only carried it.
“I think it was already easier in the medium than the sprint, but I think it's way better than we all expected. George might have another answer to that, but certainly for me, I thought it was two seats and even though it was still early on, I thought I was thinking it.
However, before the race began, there was all hope that the Chinese Grand Prix would be a two-stop event, based on what we saw in the Formula 1 sprint race. What I saw on that 19-lap scrap was that Lewis Hamilton started at the pole position, maintaining P1 and running in clean air, avoiding severe tire degradation.
Piastri admitted that for that reason he wanted to hold P1 after the start.
“I mean, I was so happy to go through turn 1 on the lead. If not, I would have been pretty annoyed,” Piastri began.
“It was very important for the first part of the race, especially considering we weren't really sure if it was one or two stops at that point,” the McLaren driver added. “And how important it is to be able to direct the pace in the sprint yesterday. I was clearly happy to be able to maintain the lead.”
He also outlined that he was comfortable all weekend.
“This weekend may be less emotional than the first two victories I have experienced, but I think it's definitely more satisfying,” Piastri said.
“I think it was the weekend, but I was very comfortable and I was confident in what I had to do and how I drove. And today's race was… I still had to push the gas and keep my feet pushing. “So I always had to keep my toes, but I feel like I managed the race well when I needed it and pushed it when I needed it.”
“Yeah, I'm very pleased with how the whole weekend turned out.”
