‘Impressive’ Oscar Piastri simulator data revealed from first day at McLaren

McLaren race engineer Tom Stallard revealed how Oscar Piastri was matching the team’s F1 race drivers within 10 laps of being on their simulator, even with a fault on the system.

Piastri joined the Formula 1 grid with McLaren last season after a highly-public move from his reserve role at Alpine and he currently sits fourth in the F1 2024 Drivers’ standings.

‘Impressive’ Oscar Piastri simulator showing revealed on first outing with McLaren

Stallard, Piastri’s race engineer and McLaren’s director of human performance, offered insight into his first session with the team when he signed, revealing that the back-to-back Formula 3 and Formula 2 champion was able to get to grips with their simulator and be on pace with their race drivers within only a handful of laps, without any reference points to go at.

A fault with the lap delta left him without a target lap time to on the steering wheel, but Stallard – an Olympic silver medallist in rowing – revealed Piastri was driving the circuit on the simulator in front of him and matching all the key reference points of their current drivers without any feedback having been given to him by the team.

“We very much set ourselves the target of trying to get the best out of Oscar, independently of a team-mate,” Stallard explained on the Beyond the Grid podcast.

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“Actually, one of the most impressive things Oscar did the first time he worked with the team, he drove the simulator, and they had a problem with the simulator that meant the lap delta wasn’t working – the lap delta is the number on the dash that tells him how fast he’s doing relative to his best lap.

“Within less than 10 laps, he was matching the lap times of our race drivers, matching all the brake points.

“He just dialled all that in himself, no feedback, incredibly quickly, and he has that ability to figure all that stuff out himself.

“So often, as the race engineer, one of your jobs is to not mess him up.

“If you say too much, you can just create noise in the guy’s head – and that’s true of any driver, not just Oscar.

“So the driver themselves have a process of improving and developing and testing things, and really what you want to do is support that.”