Piastri on battle with Norris: 'I want to try to beat him'

The first half of the Formula 1 season is over. Oscar Piastri is in his debut season, having won the Formula 2 championship in 2021. The Australian looks back positively on his first six months as a Formula 1 driver.

The first few races were very difficult for McLaren. The team was not at all where it wanted to be. Meanwhile, the car has had some upgrades, and these have been very positive. At Silverstone, Piastri finished fourth, and teammate Lando Norris second. In Hungary, the Briton was second again, where Piastri finished fifth.

So a podium finish is yet to come for the Australian McLaren driver, but he does look back on a positive first six months, responding to a question from GPblog: "I think it's been pretty solid. There's definitely been ups and downs for myself, I would say. I think as a team, clearly we've made massive steps forwards, but I think I've always been confident from the moment I joined the team that we were getting the most out of what we had."

"I think before the season I said if I was to make mistakes, I want to try and make them once and learn from them and not make them again. And there's been a couple of times where I've made a similar mistake, but I feel like I'm improving on that. So it's, it's generally going well."

Piastri is a lot less far behind Norris than Ricciardo, who was the Briton's teammate before the 2021 Formula 2 champion drove for McLaren. However, Piastri says he wants to be even better: "I don't want to just be close to Lando. Of course I want to try and beat him. It's not, not an easy task. I think we all know how good Lando is, but, I don't want to just settle there. It's been nice to be so close, but until you're beating your teammate, you're always going to feel like there's more to come."