BAKU, Azerbaijan — Oscar Piastri described Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix as the “most stressful afternoon” of his life, but it will likely be remembered as the defining moment of his early McLaren career. He found the perfect balance of aggression and precision to defeat Charles Leclerc — an opponent who is arguably the fastest driver ever to thread a Formula 1 car between the unforgiving barriers of the Baku street circuit.

Although his Lap 20 overtake on Leclerc was the key to victory, his defence of the lead for the following 31 laps was no less impressive. Any stress that was building in the 23-year-old’s cockpit during that time wasn’t visible to the watching world as he ran his McLaren within millimetres of the walls and held off every advance Leclerc attempted.

Prior to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, there was little doubt that Piastri had the potential to pull off such a performance, but after the messy circumstances of his maiden win in Hungary (where McLaren’s pit strategy made for an awkward team order), Sunday’s awe-inspiring drive seemed like a far more fitting way for the Australian to prove his mettle.

Help from Norris

The main story surrounding McLaren ahead of the weekend was the team’s decision to give priority to Lando Norris in racing situations involving the two drivers. Piastri accepted the position as de facto No. 2 driver during Thursday’s media day but knew one way he could override any awkward team radio calls was by getting as many cars between him and Norris as possible. That proved a lot easier than expected when an unfortunately timed yellow flag in qualifying forced Norris to abort his Q1 lap and saw him miss the cut for Q2.

With Norris starting from 15th on the grid, McLaren was caught between wanting a bit of Baku chaos to help him up the order but not enough to unsettle Piastri’s very real chances of victory. Remarkably it got both.

There was a twist of irony along the way, however, as Norris ended up helping Piastri rather than the other way round. Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez pitted from fourth place relatively early on Lap 13, giving him the performance advantage of fresh tyres to undercut Piastri.

As Pérez’s tyres came up to temperature and Piastri stayed out to try to match the strategy of Leclerc, there was a very real chance the performance of the Red Bull’s fresh rubber would see him take second place from the McLaren. In pitting early, though, Pérez emerged on the track behind Norris, who was running an alternative strategy and yet to pit, and on Lap 15 the McLaren driver was told to slow the Red Bull intentionally to allow Piastri more time to change tyres and emerge in front.

“That message was because Pérez was undercutting,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said after the race. “Effectively, without Lando’s help, Pérez would have pitted ahead of Oscar and the race would have unfolded in a completely different way, so I think 50% of Oscar’s victory today was shared with Lando.

“It just shows we are approaching racing as one team, and we had conversations before the weekend where we would bias one way or the other, but for us we approach every weekend … trying to maximise the result for the team. If one driver needs help, we will do it and the other driver will do it.”

What’s more, with Piastri pitting one lap before Leclerc, he benefitted from his own undercut on the Ferrari. When Leclerc came out of the pits, his mirrors were full of McLaren.

Acting on instinct

Prior to the pit stops, Leclerc’s lead looked comfortable as he opened up a six-second advantage over Piastri. The McLaren driver was struggling with his tyres towards the end of the stint and his attempts to keep up with Leclerc early in the race were the likely culprit for the rapidly degrading rubber on all four corners of his car.

At the start of his second stint, Piastri’s race engineer, Tom Stallard, told him not to make the same mistake again and play the long game. Piastri didn’t listen.

“I felt a bit sorry for my race engineer because I basically tried to attack Charles in the first stint and completely cooked my tyres,” Piastri explained. “So my engineer came on the radio and said, ‘Let’s not do that again,’ and I completely ignored him the next lap and sent it down the inside [of Leclerc].

“I think at that point, I felt like trying to stay back and wait for Charles to [experience tyre] deg was never going to happen. I thought that was just going to secure us P2.

“So, yeah, I had a similar opportunity in the first stint. I felt like on Lap 2 or 3, I was, I think, just within DRS, but didn’t fully capitalise on that opportunity. And I got to the end of the straight thinking, ‘If I had have done a couple of things a bit differently here, I maybe had a chance.’ So when I had a similar opportunity after the pit stop, I had to take it. And yeah, I wouldn’t be sat here [with the win] without that.”

It was that killer instinct to go against his engineer’s judgement and pull off a high-risk overtake that defined Piastri’s win. It’s a trait that is increasingly present in his driving, and one that is present among so many of F1’s greats.

“If I didn’t take that opportunity then I was never going to have another one I think,” Piastri said. “I mean, credit to Charles, he was incredibly fair. I think maybe he thought I was going to sail on into the run-off, but I was pleasantly surprised that I actually made the corner.

“It was a high-risk, high-commitment move, but that’s what I needed to do to try and win the race because I wasn’t really going to be that keen to finish second. So I had to try.”

Watching from the McLaren pit wall, Stella was hugely impressed by the overtake.

“When I watched the move live and I saw him going to the inside, my instinct said he is going to go long,” Stella said after the race. “But that’s why I want to emphasise the precision Oscar showed in the execution on the inside apex kerb in corner one. So, yes, I was surprised by the move, but Oscar is always surprising us with his talent and ability.”

Leclerc also appeared to be caught by surprise as he made no attempt to block. That was partly because Piastri came from so far back, but it was also due to a false confidence the Ferrari driver had that he would reclaim the position in the following laps.

“That’s probably where I lost the race,” Leclerc said. “I misjudged that. When Oscar overtook me into Turn 1, I was not too worried. I just wanted to stay within the DRS, keep my tyres, and attempt to overtake him later on.

“However, this opportunity never really arose again, just because we were too slow in the straights. Yeah, that was a small misjudgement, which had a big consequence. So sometimes it hurts, and it does today, but it’s the way it is.”

What came next was the stressful part of the afternoon. On Laps 29, 31, 33, 41 and 45, Leclerc got his Ferrari alongside the McLaren on the run to Turn 1, but Piastri measured his defence of the position with the same precision with which he had launched the attack on Lap 20.

Piastri’s defending on the pit straight was helped by his McLaren running less downforce, and in turn featuring less drag, than the Ferrari in Baku, giving him a slight straight-line speed advantage along the 2.2-kilometre run from Turn 15 to Turn 1. It was a double-edged advantage, though, as the Ferrari’s extra downforce was allowing it to close the gap in the middle sector, which in itself could help Leclerc get a run on the McLaren from Turn 15 onwards.

“I was taking a lot of risk through the castle section because I needed to try and build the gap to Leclerc from Turn 7 through the rest of the lap,” Piastri said. “And yeah, I had a couple of close calls through the castle and Turn 15 as well. … But that was where I was really trying to be fast and obviously get a good exit out of the last corner.”

With a handful of laps to go, Leclerc’s tyres cried enough and Piastri was able to ease away from the chaos of the crash between Pérez and Carlos Sainz. The final few laps and the victory that followed were Piastri’s reward for one of the hardest-fought wins of the season. For a driver in just his second F1 campaign, it was hugely impressive.

“I would say today Oscar gave also a demonstration of his mental strength,” Stella said. “He drove like a driver with a lot of experience, like a driver who has been under this kind of pressure before and that he can look at one eye with the mirror and the other at where the braking point is. He did it again and again with a great level of precision and very controlled, even when he was talking on the radio he was very under control. So a phenomenal driver and a brilliant drive today.”

McLaren lead the constructors’ championship

The fact that the win helped moved McLaren 20 points clear of Red Bull in the constructors’ standings made it all the sweeter for Stella on Sunday night. For a team that started the 2023 season rooted to the bottom of the standings, it has been a remarkable turnaround in an unusually short time.

“If I look at it for one second then as a milestone, leading the championship is definitely huge because we don’t have to forget at the start of 2023 we were last … and now we lead the classification,” Stella said. “At the same time, which is my way of going racing and the way that I would like the team to go racing, this second is already over. We don’t look at the classification, we just look at executing at every single event, delivering the upgrades that we still plan to take to some of the future races, because the car as a matter of fact is still not fast enough.

“I often hear that McLaren is the best car, but this is not in the numbers. I think in the numbers, McLaren is the best car at some kinds of circuit, like Barcelona, Hungary, Zandvoort, for good technical reasons, but here I don’t think McLaren enjoyed any advantage over Ferrari, and I think not even over Red Bull. If we see even in Monza Mercedes was in the 0.086 seconds between P2 and P6, so it is just very, very balanced. So I think the execution by the drivers and by the team is just what makes the difference.”

That precarious situation is even more finely balanced for McLaren in the drivers’ standings, where Norris — despite his qualifying misfortune in Baku — managed to close the gap to Verstappen by three points to 59. Piastri is now just 32 points behind Norris, further muddying the waters, and Stella said the team would continuously review which driver has priority as the season unfolds.

“I think I said already that we have two No. 1 drivers, effectively,” Stella said on Sunday. “Having two No. 1 drivers mean we approach things first of all in the interest of the team, and the interest of the team is to win the constructors’ championship and also the drivers’ championship.

“Lando was in the most favourable position before Baku, I think he still is in the most favourable position now, so naturally we would have supported Lando. But I think we have evidence today that actually, interestingly, it was Lando supporting Oscar and enabling Oscar’s victory thanks to driving for the team and driving to support his teammate.”

While Norris is still expected to get the nod in 50/50 calls next weekend in Singapore, Piastri is making an increasingly compelling case for why McLaren should keep some flexibility over its rules of engagement. His victory in Baku was a statement win, one that underlines his credentials as a champion in the making.