Piastri believed in McLaren turnaround: 'But we didn't expect this'

From laughing stock to - arguably - a top team. The transformation McLaren has achieved in the first half of the season is extremely admirable. Full of confidence, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri entered the summer break. "There was always a sense of optimism in the team," he said.

They soon knew. Barely a few kilometres of testing had been completed before McLaren realised that the MCL60 was not the top car that had been hoped for. That the English team did not make a strong impression during testing was no sandbagging. There was a structural problem: McLaren really was in the back of the field. During the first Grands Prix of the season, this was also evident. Norris, for instance, finished qualifying in nineteenth place in Saudi Arabia. Not how McLaren should be.

McLaren worked hard in Woking

Meanwhile, at the factory in Woking, people were working hard on an MCL60 2.0. Before that could take to the track, it was simply getting through the races as well as possible. Little by little, the McLaren got better, which eventually resulted in the team getting on the podium with Norris at Silverstone and Budapest, and Piastri finishing second in the Sprint in Belgium. The latter, in Belgium, in the company of GPblog, looked back on the first half of the season as well as the difficulties his team had to overcome.

"I think when we started the season, obviously we weren't particularly happy with where the car was at," the Australian rookie said. " We obviously made a lot of changes within the team. But of course, the upgrades we put on the car, they don't just happen overnight. We're developing them and seeing the numbers for them for weeks if not months in advance. So there was a sense of optimism about what was coming. But there's always a nervousness about whether it's going to deliver on track."

'Hungaroring was a good test'

Piastri calls it 'very encouraging' how the upgrades have worked out. "And then on, on Sundays in the race, I think it maybe gave us even more than we thought in terms of lap time but also protecting tyres and stuff like that. Budapest was, I think a very good test for our car. We had similar-ish conditions in say Miami, where it was very hot and we were quite literally the slowest and in Budapest, we were still the second or third quickest team."

"I think the turnaround has been pretty remarkable, but I think there's always been a sense of optimism within the team, that we could turn it around, maybe not to the extent we have, but to be back sort of, I guess, where McLaren has been the past couple of seasons," the Australian said.