- He enjoyed a strong debut season in 2024
- Will return to Melbourne Park this year
- It is optimistic about your possibilities on the track
Oscar Piastri has enjoyed his first trip at the new McLaren of Formula One and offered the bold statement: “I think I can become a world champion this year.”
Affirming that he is a different pilot of 12 months ago, the Australian, who won two Grand Prix last year while ending fourth in the championship, explained how he expected “much more” this year when he took the new MCL39 for his first rotation in Silverstone.
Lando Norris, his most experienced teammate who finished runner -up behind Max Verstappen last year, is the favorite of the United Kingdom's betting runners to take the title this year.
But while the local hero Norris was the center of attention at the British Grand Prix House during the McLaren promotional filming day on Thursday, Piastri, 23, the fourth favorite of the betting corridors, quickly remembered everyone about his own ambitions of his own ambitions by 2025.
“I want to win the World Championship this year,” said Piastri, who can't wait to start his season in front of his multitude of Melbourne in a month in the Australian Grand of being the first world champion of origin from Alan Jones in 1980.
'We are starting with a clean slate and I think I can become a world champion this year.
Oscar Piastri enjoyed a strong debut season with McLaren, including this victory in the race in Azerbaijan
The second -year F1 star believes that he can become a world champion in his second season
'I feel that 12 months ago I was still entering the season with some weaknesses with which I had no confidence.
“I think of last season I went to them.”
In saying that it had been “great” at the steering wheel of the MCl39 for the first time, Piasstri joked with the “new innovations” that McLaren had introduced to make the car even better than the MCL38 in which he and Norris finished the first of the team . Constructors crown since 1998.
'We have not been still. There are some things that are different, some new innovations in this car and that is what it should do to try to stay at the top
'I think that during the past season we went to the top in the Construction Championship, but it was very tight throughout the season, so you can really not afford to stay still. There are many teams waiting to try to overcome us.
'I am definitely entering this year with the objective and preparation to try to challenge for a championship, and try to challenge for both championships.
“Winning Grands Prix at the beginning of my career has given me a taste for success and I want much more,” added the man who won his first two Grand Prix in Hungary and Azerbaijan last year.
Piastri said he felt renewed after “probably the longest trip I had in Australia since I left home about 10 years ago” while enjoying watching tennis and Crick with friends.
“I am very excited to recover it as the first round,” he said. “I'm probably not at the starter of my rookie season because that would have been quite full.”
The Norris teammate, although he hopes not to give an inch in another battle of 'Codos' with Verstappen, also recognized the difficult challenge he was going to get from his own teammate.
“I know that Oscar is hungry for a championship and each pilot is and surely he is able to win a championship,” Norris said.
“Everyone knows that we want to overcome and want to be the best dog in the team and that is normal, that is the expectation.”
The team director, Andrea Stella, was happy with the potential internal rivalry. “I really hope to have this type of challenge,” he said, when asked about managing their pair.