Oscar Piastri says he is nearing Formula 1 ceiling ahead of Melbourne return

Heading into his fourth season in Formula 1, Oscar Piastri said he is approaching the ceiling of how he can extract performance from a race weekend.

Ultimately falling short in what was his first world championship battle last season, the Australian heads home to Melbourne this time around feeling more complete as he and the rest of the grid starts from scratch at Albert Park this weekend.

Oscar Piastri nearing personal performance ceiling in fourth F1 season

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Piastri won seven races in a close title fight with his teammate, Lando Norris, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen surging from more than 100 points off the pace to force a final-race decider between the three, which ultimately went in Norris’ favour.

This time around, McLaren is not expecting the all-new MCL40 to be at the head of the field at the Australian Grand Prix, with the Woking-based team and Red Bull expected to be just behind an early competitive front two of Mercedes and Ferrari, based on understanding after testing.

As for how he’s approaching the regulation reset, the Melburnian is looking to put the lessons of his first three seasons in Formula 1 into practice for what is arguably the biggest single change in the sport’s history, with both chassis and power unit rules changing at the same time.

While adapting to a radically different driving experience, Piastri believes his performances in 2025 show he is getting closer to showing his full potential in Formula 1.

“I think last year, or certainly end of 2024, I felt like I’d kind of been able to get on top of all the different areas I needed to, just not really all at the same time or on the same weekend,” Piastri explained to media including PlanetF1.com in Melbourne.

“What probably the biggest positive of 2025 for me was that I was able to put all of those kind of strengths and learning together so much more often.

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“I think some of the learnings, just from a driving style point of view, there are still some things that suited me better than others, and that’s just kind of natural in the way you drive. Everyone’s going to have their things that they find easier to adapt to and things that they find harder to adapt to, but I think with this year’s cars, they’re so different.

“We’re talking about adapting to things that we’ve never even considered as a race car driver before.

“That’s a very new process, and I think, for me, what was very positive out of last year was that the process of attacking something that was either new or I needed to get on top of worked well – and I think you can apply that to kind of anything.

“So, I think we’re always going to be learning, no matter if you’ve had three years in the sport like me, or 15 or 20 like Lewis [Hamilton] and Fernando [Alonso.

“But I think, definitely the kind of ‘ceiling’, let’s say, is I’m getting closer to that ceiling, and I certainly felt like that in 2025, and I think the results and a lot of the race weekends kind of show that.”

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