The physical and mental tuning helping Piastri acclimatise to F1

We’ve photographed Oscar Piastri in the gym. Not just any gym, of course; it’s the typically just-so fitness centre in the depths of the McLaren Technology Centre, softly lit and bedecked with inspirational slogans etched into the glass. It’s in rooms such as this where Piastri has been busily laying down the groundwork for his entrance to Formula 1.

There’s no question that F1 machinery is a physical
 step up from the world of junior single-seaters: while power steering mitigates that step to a degree, the g-forces are higher, the races longer, and the rigours of travel more intense. Much of the conditioning required can only come from driving… and seat time isn’t something Piastri enjoyed in great quantities through the last season where, having won the Formula 2 championship in 2021, he
 was warming the bench as Alpine’s reserve driver 
before McLaren swooped to the rescue.

“Last year effectively he had a year off,” says his physio Kim Keedle – who, like Piastri, is a Melbourne native. “It was a bit of a strange year because he was still travelling to all the races. When you’re travelling it’s hard to train, to have really good quality. The gyms aren’t great in hotels.

“He was kind of doing marketing hours as opposed to drivers’ hours. So he was at the track for long periods of time. He was still trying to find his feet in terms of being at F1 weekends, understanding media commitments, etc. So, certainly in the first half of the year, it’s not like we could just train all the time.

“He was still doing base training to keep the engine topped up but there wasn’t a big focus on fitness, the focus was on learning F1, getting embedded in the team and learning how to do the weekends. Since October or November last year, we’ve been in a pretty long pre-season. And the biggest thing we’ve had to adapt to in terms of Formula 1 is building a bigger cardio base – getting his cardiovascular fitness up to be able to withstand the demands of driving for two hours in a hot environment. And also the demands of travel, the ability to repeat performances week in, week out.

“And then secondly, one of the big things has been the g-forces, which are significantly higher than in F2. So just really building his neck strength up so that he can tolerate that.

GP Racing was on hand to see Piastri being put through his paces

Photo by: Malcolm Griffiths

“There’s a certain amount you can do in the gym. But really he has to be in the car to get that specific neck training. So I guess one of the good things we’ve had this year has been the TPC [Testing of Previous Cars] events, where he’s been doing test driving in the old car, and that’s the biggest thing for him to get that neck strength, so that’s been really beneficial.”

Alpine and McLaren resolved their differences over Piastri’s move in a grown-up fashion, enabling him to complete 123 laps in McLaren’s 2022 car – the MCL36 –
 in the Young Driver Test which followed last year’s season closer. His new team then ran private tests for him in late January and early February at Paul Ricard and Barcelona, where he drove the 2021 McLaren, the MCL35M. While testing current cars is banned outside official tests, F1’s sporting regulations permit teams to run previous-generation machinery (subject to certain conditions) under the so-called TPC framework.

Although pumping iron has its limits in terms of specific training, it does yield strength-and-conditioning benefits in key areas such as the shoulder girdle and accessory muscles for the neck. In an F1 car upper-body strength is less of a prerequisite for success than it is in the likes of F2 and F3, where the cars have no power steering. For the graduate driver, therefore, there’s a process of transitioning that focus from the arms and parts of the shoulders to the neck, and avoiding weight gain.

"Having those tests in the older car at
 the start of the year, were, I’d say, quite good for my body to get used to it. By the time I got into official testing I was fine" Oscar Piastri

We’re putting Piastri through his paces after a full day in the McLaren simulator and, while his neck might not have been repeatedly bludgeoned by like-for-like g-forces, his hamstrings are tighter than Ebenezer Scrooge.

It has not escaped GP Racing’s notice that a particularly torturous piece of equipment is no longer present. In days of yore the McLaren gym featured a replica cockpit in which a crash helmet was rigged with weights and pulleys to simulate g-forces; at one pre-season event a younger 
Lewis Hamilton, then but a one-time world champion, did his best to stifle giggles as various members of the Fourth Estate lay spent on the floor after trying to complete a single virtual lap of the Albert Park circuit. Thankfully sports science appears to have moved on since then and that device has been consigned to the scrapper.

“Trying to load your neck up with four or five g’s, for however many seconds it is and do it 10-15 times a lap for an hour and a bit – it’s very hard to replicate that kind of stuff,” says Piastri. “You’re also trying to hold your body up in the car, you’re trying to concentrate on where you’re going. There’s a lot of different things – simply putting a neck harness on that someone is pulling on a bungee cord, it, it helps, but it never quite gets you finished until you’ve jumped in the car and done some laps.

“Every time you come back for a new season, the first day in the car is always a bit rough for your body. Having those tests in the older car at
 the start of the year, were, I’d say, quite good for my body to get used to it. By the time I got into official testing I was fine. Bahrain isn’t the most physical circuit we go to – Saudi was a bigger challenge on the neck.”

Some of the neck training necessary can only be had through Piastri spending time in the car

Photo by: Malcolm Griffiths

Young drivers require a different training regime than older drivers because their bodies are still developing and they haven’t accumulated as much training stress. An older driver with more base fitness can, for instance, have an occasional day off or decide they’re going to ride their bicycle rather than hit the gym – up to a point.

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Keedle used to be Romain Grosjean’s physio at Haas before joining Piastri at the beginning of 2021, so he has experience at both ends of the driver-age spectrum.

“When I first met Oscar, he had some good training exposure through the previous [Alpine] Academy,” says Keedle. “But he still had a pretty young training age – he hadn’t trained for as many years as, say, a junior footballer or someone like that, who starts training at 10. Physically, he hadn’t had that so there was a little bit of work to do when we first met in terms of just general movement, general strength, general cardio ability.

“He’s been steadily progressing over the two years and he’s still only just turned 22. So he’s still probably got another three or four years until he sort of reaches his physical maturation. And so we’re still just working with
 a long-term plan to get into that.

“The biggest thing with Oscar in terms of training has been teaching him about the training process, training philosophy, making him autonomous so that when he wants to train, he understands the benefits – so that if I’m not there he can just go into a session, and I know it’s going to be good quality. That’s been one of the big things that we’ve been trying to achieve with him, which has been great – promoting good habits and making them very consistent and repeatable.”

It helps that Piastri has a remarkably professional outlook for a young driver. Before connecting with Keedle, he took responsibility for his own training as well as organising much of his life. If moving to the UK, leaving his family in the southern hemisphere, was in any way traumatic, it doesn’t show since he is outwardly a textbook laid-back Aussie.

It’s in the details you see the inner steel: rocketing through the junior series at a pace which appeared to take the Alpine young-driver set-up by surprise, then working with his management to secure a better offer when it became obvious Alpine didn’t have much of a plan for him. He talks about his work with a seriousness that belies his age, a subtle gravitas which indicates an awareness of the value of hard work augmenting natural talent.

Piastri has a good understanding of what is needed for good quality training sessions that he can run autonomously

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“I’m reasonably good with it,” he says. “I could probably be a little bit better, as I’m sure most people could. But yeah, on the whole, I’m pretty good with that. Before Kim I was more or less training by myself, pretty much. I was getting guidance but the actual sessions it was just up to me to turn up. So I think there was an element of the last little bit of strictness, especially on the days where you really don’t feel like it, having someone there pushing you definitely helps.”

A cynic might opine that while all this attention to detail in Piastri’s training is commendable, 90% of the preconditions for success lie in the car, and the MCL60 is currently far from a winning proposition. Even its performance upgrade package that appeared in Baku is a short-term solution to better compete in the midfield. But the events of the Australian GP have provided a timely reminder that in F1, pretty much anything can happen and a smart, well-prepared driver can profit from being in the right place at the right time.

McLaren’s methodology over the past four seasons has been to be the best it can be in every element of its track operations so that when it produces a race-winning car it’ll be ready to fight at the front of the field. 
In that context Piastri’s preparations are business as usual for one of the most historically successful teams in F1. He’s already sharpening up for the more physically and mentally difficult races of the season by undergoing what Keedle obliquely refers to as “heat-specific training”.

"The main focus, not just in F2 but for my whole junior career, was trying to be strong enough in my upper body to turn the wheel. Whereas F1 it’s much more firstly on my neck" Oscar Piastri

“It’s basically going into a very, very hot room and doing exercise in there, trying to acclimatise yourself,” explains Piastri. “It’s obviously a bit more scientific than that! The short story is just getting yourself comfortable with being hot, and trying to get some adaptations for that.

“The main focus, not just in F2 but for my whole junior career, was trying to be strong enough in my upper body to turn the wheel. Whereas F1 it’s much more firstly on my neck and, as Kim was saying, the supporting muscles to that. But also being able to survive a race that’s two hours long, and places like Singapore and Saudi Arabia where it’s hot. That [Saudi] was a big one so having a good cardio base for that was very important.”

With the opening trio of races in the bag, including a surprising points finish from 16th on the grid on home turf in Melbourne, Oscar’s focus will turn to consolidating this new routine over the coming months. Inevitably there will be elements that grate. Jenson Button was approaching his 30s before he developed a love for triathlons. Yuki Tsunoda hates the gym so much that his team boss made him move closer to the AlphaTauri factory, so training could be enforced and a junk food ban maintained. It’s certainly beneficial not to have a training-averse mindset.

“I definitely prefer strength training over cardio,” says Oscar. “Cycling I don’t get involved with too much. I’ve seen too many people get injured. But I’m starting to… ‘enjoy’ might be a stretch but I tolerate running…”

Piastri has his preferences when it comes to training exercises, and steers clear of cycling

Photo by: Malcolm Griffiths

Mind over matter

Total performance hinges on mental attitude as well as physical aptitude. While drivers are often reticent to reveal what they or some others might perceive as weakness, awareness has been growing in recent years of the importance of mental health. George Russell has a sports psychologist; and Kim Keedle’s previous driver, Romain Grosjean, trod the same path earlier in his career after a number of on-track incidents in which he made poor decisions in the moment.

If further evidence is needed, you need look no further than the many episodes of Drive to Survive where the physio must act as ‘driver whisperer’ as well as trainer-taskmaster.

“Oscar has a mental coach,” says Keedle. “And I work very closely with her so the messages and the language coming from me are the same as what they’ve spoken about. It’s to help him get in the zone, to help him understand the process and the mental side of performance.

“But of course, because I’m with him all the time, and I’m there before he gets in the car, I’m the last person he speaks to before he speaks to his engineers. I’m the one that’s prompting him and giving him those cues to make sure it’s at the forefront of his mind when it gets into the car.”

To some extent the process is one of focus and of filtering out noise. This kind of process thrives on routine and repeatability, which is why the period immediately before the race start is so important. At this stage of the grand prix weekend there are a plethora of distractions which can only be combated by sticking to a properly calibrated system.

“We’re still finding our feet, getting to know the team and how much time we can allocate, but yes, we do have a routine,” says Keedle. “At the moment we have about an hour to ourselves before he gets in the car and drives out of the garage.

“We break that down into him just switching off and having a bit of chill time because he’s had media and engineers’ meetings all morning. Then we’ll start getting him into a more appropriate sort of mental space where he will do some mental exercises and then we’ll go into physical warm-up. We have a set plan because it’s beneficial for performance.

“For us, more than anything, it’s about transitioning to race mode. That’s his mental switch to go, right, once the visor’s down, it’s game on, let’s go.”

"Once the visor’s down, it’s game on, let’s go," says Piastri's trainer Kim Keedle

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images