RacingOscar Piastri says the biggest change behind his best Formula 1 season was in his head, not in the gym or on the data screen. The McLaren driver told Quad Lock that a shift in mindset during 2025 turned him from a driver still chasing the next area to improve into one who arrived at each weekend believing he could win.
That belief showed up in the numbers. Piastri finished third in the championship in 2025 with seven Grand Prix wins and nine podiums. A year earlier, he had ended 2024 fourth overall with two wins and six podiums. Speaking in an interview with Quad Lock, Piastri said the jump even caught him off guard.
“On the whole, the step I took from 2024 into 2025 was probably bigger than I, and quite a lot of people, expected,” Piastri, McLaren driver, said in an interview with Quad Lock.
He said the difference was not just pace, but the way he arrived at a race weekend. “I think this was the first year where I could enter every race weekend going, I know if I do a good enough job and get close to my potential, I can win every weekend,” Piastri, McLaren driver, said in an interview with Quad Lock.
That was new for him. Piastri said in the same Quad Lock interview that in previous seasons he could feel that way on certain weekends, but not across a full year. There was still, as he put it, “what do I need to learn next, or what do I need to improve on next.” Even after the step forward, he made clear the work is still going on. “You're always trying to improve and evolve,” Piastri, McLaren driver, said in an interview with Quad Lock.
He expanded on that in a Quad Lock fan Q&A, where he said the mental side of Formula 1 is “probably equally, if not even more, important than the physical training.” Piastri, McLaren driver, said in the fan Q&A that teams can chase tiny gains, “200ths of a second here, 200ths of a second here, to find a tenth in total,” but a driver who is not “in the right state of mind” can “easily be leaving one of those tenths just on the table from your own performance.”
For Piastri, that lesson was built over time. In the same Quad Lock fan Q&A, he looked back at the end of his 2023 rookie season and said the mental load had piled up. “By the time the season finished, I actually just stopped thinking about racing for a bit,” Piastri, McLaren driver, said in the fan Q&A. He added that he was “absolutely knackered from a mental point of view” after spending so much energy searching for gains.
By 2025, he said in the Quad Lock fan Q&A, he had learned more about where to place that energy, “which battles you fight, which ones you don’t.” He described 2025 as a high-pressure season and said managing the difficult moments was part of getting through it.
Piastri also said in the Quad Lock fan Q&A that there is still room to sharpen that side of his performance. “There's probably some improvements that I can make,” he said, adding that he wants to work with the people around him on “how we can reduce stress in the environment, and how you can just maximise your potential.”