Piastri Confident McLaren Will Stay Strong All Year

Formula One F1 - Bahrain Grand Prix - Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir, Bahrain - April 10, 2025 McLaren's Oscar Piastri ahead of the race REUTERS/Rula Rouhana

Oscar Piastri has dismissed talk of McLaren being slowed by a rule change in June and says he expects the champions to stay strong all season.
The FIA, Formula One's governing body, will introduce more stringent front wing load tests from the Spanish Grand Prix on June 1 to reduce the permitted level of flex after already addressing rear wings, Reuters reported.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said in Japan last weekend that the change would be significant and there was "an unknown" as to who would be affected.
"We have a big regulation change coming at race nine. You know, how is that going to affect the run of play?" the Briton told Sky Sports television.
Piastri doubted it would make much difference to McLaren, who lead both championships with Lando Norris a point clear of Red Bull's four-times world champion Max Verstappen, the winner at Suzuka last Sunday.
"I'm pretty confident we’ll be strong all year," the Australian told reporters ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix, round four of the championship.
"I don’t think it’ll change too much. I’ve not spoken to the team about it massively, in all honesty, which probably tells you enough about that.
"Let’s see when we get to Spain, but we’ve still got a lot of races until then and I think we’ll be a strong team all year round."
Piastri, winner in China after Norris won the Australian opener, said he would rather be driving his car than a Red Bull.
While Verstappen has shown it can be a winner, he is already on his second teammate of the season after Liam Lawson was demoted back to Racing Bulls with Yuki Tsunoda going in the opposite direction.
"Clearly the car looks pretty difficult. We’ve seen that with Liam. We saw it with Checo (Sergio Perez) last year, even with Yuki in Japan," said Piastri.
"I think going into an environment that has been so focused on the way Max drives for nearly 10 years now -- it would be a very tough environment to go into and have immediate success.
"I’m quite happy that I’m driving a McLaren and not a Red Bull at the moment."
Piastri said the McLaren was a tricky car to extract maximum performance from but a lot of the ideas and philosophies were similar to last year.
"If I had to pick out of all 10 cars on the grid right now, I'd still pretty happily be choosing ours," he said.