Piatri Shares McLaren's 'Only Concern' Ahead Of 'Chaotic' Chinese Grand Prix Weekend

Monday, 15 April 2024 at 19:30

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri revealed his team's only concern ahead of the first Sprint race weekend of the 2024 season at Shanghai International Circuit.

After the first four race weekends, McLaren established itself as the third-fastest team on the grid. On the one hand, Lando Norris admitted he had higher expectations.

On the other hand, McLaren has done much better than during the first four races of the 2023 season. Going into China, the team will be looking to maximize their opportunity, and it is expected to be an exciting weekend. Piastri told The Fast and The Curious Podcast:

"It's difficult for the teams definitely to set up the car for that. I think the way the format is this year is a bit more forgiving."

The Chinese Grand Prix is a sprint weekend, which means all the teams will only have one practice session before jumping into the sprint shootout, sprint race, qualifying, and the grand prix race.

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This format last year meant that all the teams had to lock their setups after the first practice session and couldn't change them during the rest of the weekend. This time, however, F1 should be able to alter their setups between the sprint race and qualifying.

"I mean last year I think one of the issues that most of the teams and drivers had was once you finished practice, you couldn't adjust the set-up from then on,"

"So, hopefully, this year we won't have any kind of issues like that because we will be able to change the car after the Sprint. If we want to change stuff, we can change it for Grand Prix qualifying and the Grand Prix."

The biggest challenge that Piastri sees coming into the weekend is that Formula 1 hasn't raced in China for five years, which means no one has an idea how the new generation of F1 cars will perform and behave at this circuit.

"So, I think from that aspect it will be OK, just if there's any track issues or it's the first time we're running this generation of car there, so there's some unknowns on how to react to curbs and bumps."

"I think that's our only real concern but I think it should be OK and should be chaotic being a Sprint."