[ad_1]
Having completed his final McLaren test of the year after setting foot on the Barcelona circuit, Oscar Piastri wanted to get acquainted with his new car.
Australians have been working hard After his move from Alpine to McLaren And he was announced as the team’s new driver for 2023, replacing Daniel Ricciardo.
After a playoff test in Abu Dhabi, McLaren arranged for Piastri to run a private test drive at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya ahead of his first visit to the McLaren Technology Center in the UK.
Piastri, who competed last in the final Formula 2 race of the 2021 season, has been out of racing for a year and it’s no surprise to see him feeling a bit rusty.
As any driver new to F1 quickly discovers, the experience can be a brutal test of the neck muscles, and Piastri was no exception.
“My neck hurts,” the 21-year-old said. “But it always takes a while to get used to F1. I’m getting there, I’m sticking with it and I should be training more over Christmas.
“It’s been a huge help to be able to work with the engineers and the race team that I’ll be working with next year. It’s been really helpful to start that relationship.
“Now that I’ve sat down and will definitely be going back to racing, we can focus on some of the details of the game that I wouldn’t normally do in Tests – more focus on that as the season is coming up and getting around quickly.”
Piastri, who has done the least amount of racing in Formula 1, must now be race-ready in the MCL35M, which has proven to be easier to drive than this year’s MCL36.
The Australian said he had the chance to experience all the sporadic rains in northeastern Spain.
“It’s nice to get back into the swing of things with something race-specific,” he said. “We’ve covered a lot and I feel like I’m making some good progress.
“We revisited some old topics that I hadn’t had a chance to explore in a while, and I learned a lot about different driving techniques.
“It was pretty cold and we even had some slippery conditions, so I was just getting used to it all and soaking up as much as I could and getting back into the swing of things because there was a little bit of rust.”
McLaren said Piastri will now spend the winter at his home in Australia before returning early next year to prepare with the team for the 2023 season.
read more: Fears Red Bull’s Formula 1 cost cap penalty will ‘hurt them a lot’ in 2023/24
[ad_2]
Source link