Oscar Piastri: McLaren handled Mexico altitude “better than I was expecting”

The McLaren driver believes he has more to come after a “messy” soft-tyre lap in FP2

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

Motorsport Papaya

For McLaren fans. Papaya news from Woking, with the latest on the drivers, the car, team strategy and every race weekend.

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri walks away from FP2 in Mexico City's circuit with optimism as he confirms his car coped better with the high altitude than he expected it to. This comes despite the driver having a "pretty messy" qualifying simulation.

The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit sits more than 2,200 metres above sea level. The thin air leaves teams running with very little downforce and poor cooling, making it one of the most challenging weekends of the calendar.

Speaking after FP2, Piastri said the conditions had not been as tricky as he had feared.

“It was difficult for sure, but I don’t think necessarily worse than what I was expecting, or if anything it was probably a little bit better than I was expecting. So yeah, everything felt OK. I think we seemed to be relatively competitive, to be honest.”

The Australian admitted his soft-tyre lap failed to come together, but believed the papaya-coloured team's underlying pace is strong.

“My soft lap in FP2 was pretty messy, but I felt like the kind of overall pace seems to be there. So Ferrari looked very strong, which I guess you would kind of expect on a track like this, but I think we had a pretty good day.”

Piastri said that cleaning up his mistakes should put him much higher up the order, but warned that beating Ferrari would be difficult.

“There was a couple of very big mistakes, so I’m optimistic that if I can tidy those up, I’ll be a lot further up as well, which is a nice feeling to have. So I think to try and beat Ferrari tomorrow is going to be very tough, as it looks like. And it’s very tight, I would say, through the whole field, so you’re going to have to be on top of the game.”

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

Asked how he had adapted his driving to the conditions, Piastri said the low grip was nothing new under this year’s regulations.

“It’s tough. It’s just incredibly low grip. I think with this year’s cars, honestly, it’s a similar story in most places, so it doesn’t feel that dramatic here. But it’s always a challenge, not just for the car in terms of balance, but cooling the engines this year, it’s always very tough.”

Mercedes driver George Russell suggested on Thursday that Ferrari’s smaller turbo could give it “quite an advantage” at altitude, with the 2026 rules having dropped the MGU-H that previously helped to eliminate turbo lag.

But Piastri doesn't agree that the turbo will be the deciding factor, adding that Ferrari didn't look especially fast in a straight line.

“They looked very quick today. I don’t think the turbo is going to make as much of a difference as we thought. They, if anything, looked a bit slow on the straights, so let’s wait and see tomorrow. Definitely in some circumstances it will help them, but I think in normal conditions it’s not as big of a factor as we first thought.”