Constructors’ battle ‘more pressure for everyone else’ than McLaren – 2024 Qatar GP Preview with Piastri’s race engineer Tom Stallard
F1 Nation
Formula 1
4.4 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2024
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
McLaren lead Ferrari by just 24 points in the Constructors’ Standings. With the Qatar Grand Prix featuring the final F1 Sprint of the season, 103 points still on offer in the last two rounds of 2024, and Red Bull also in the mix, it’s still all to play for.
McLaren haven’t been World Champions since 1998, so are they feeling the pressure? Will they return to winning ways in Qatar after a double podium and Sprint victory here last season? Who’s their biggest threat for P1? Why has Piastri had weaker results since his win in Baku? And how does this fight compare to Stallard’s experiences as an Olympic rower?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Lusail International Circuit for F1 Nation's preview of the Qatar Grand Prix. |
| 0:13.3 | I'm Tom Clarkson, I'm sat in the paddock, newly crown world champion Max Verstappen has just walked past. |
| 0:19.1 | Carlos Sites too, and it's cool. Not cold, but |
| 0:22.3 | 19 degrees, much cooler than last year, which all the drivers will be very relieved about. |
| 0:29.1 | There's a lot of racing to look forward to this weekend. We've got the final F1 sprint of the |
| 0:33.5 | season on Saturday plus potentially title-defining rounds of F1 Academy and Formula 2. |
| 0:41.1 | Now, joining me in the paddock is Oscar Piastri's race engineer at McLaren, Tom Stallard. Tom, |
| 0:46.4 | how are things? Very good. Thank you. Very good. Now, you were incredibly fast at this racetrack last |
| 0:52.1 | year, double podium, Oscar's sprint win as well. Just how much |
| 0:55.9 | confidence does the team have coming into the weekend? I think confidence is good. The last two |
| 1:02.9 | races, let's say, haven't gone how we had hoped they would go. And so we approach this race with |
| 1:08.9 | some caution, let's say, |
| 1:12.0 | rather than being overconfident. |
| 1:14.0 | But I think the car should be strong here. |
| 1:16.4 | It was strong last year. |
| 1:17.5 | It's not changed that much since then |
| 1:20.7 | in terms of the characteristics we have in the car. |
| 1:23.7 | The medium speed corners have been a strength for us, |
| 1:26.3 | and there's plenty of medium speed corners here so |
| 1:28.2 | we're optimistic that we can perform well at this circuit can we just dig into the performance of |
| 1:33.6 | the car since Singapore that devastatingly effective weekend for the team and then there haven't been |
| 1:39.9 | as many headline performances since then is it because there's been issues with the car or is it simply that the opposition have |
... |
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