Palmer: Piastri had a brilliant weekend in Suzuka.

      Former driver and F1 TV expert Jolyon Palmer on McLaren's progress and the results of the Japanese Grand Prix…

      Jolyon Palmer: “After the finish, Oscar Piastri said on the radio: ‘When we manage to start, we achieve good results.’ In fact, it was not just a ‘good result’ — Oscar had a brilliant weekend and finished second. This race will be a big boost for his team.

      Piastri's weekend consisted of three key moments. The first was qualifying. This year, the McLaren team has not been as competitive on a fast lap.

      On Saturday, George Russell openly spoke about balance issues and in the final qualifying session, he edged out Oscar by just five hundredths. This indicates that if Mercedes has problems, McLaren and Ferrari are ready to take advantage of it.

      We saw that Mercedes' rivals do not necessarily need to start from the front row to lead the race. A good start was another key moment for Piastri – he practiced the starting procedure many times throughout the weekend, and it paid off in the race.

      No one was surprised when Oscar led the race at the start. Yes, Ferrari usually has the best starts, but Lando Norris also showed excellent starts. Alpine had good starts too, and Carlos Sainz on Williams was arguably the best at the start all season, proving that the Mercedes power unit can accelerate quickly, but the factory team has issues with it.

      The third aspect in which Oscar excelled on Sunday was strategy. I appreciated his racing intelligence. He understood that at the end of the eighth lap, Russell would get too close, allowed him to pass in the chicane without a fight, knowing he would have more energy on the exit, and regained the lead on the straight. If he had actively defended or not used the chicane to recharge, Russell could have taken advantage and moved ahead.

      Pulling away from Mercedes, Oscar clearly communicated to the team that he did not want to be overtaken during the pit stop. He preferred an early pit stop to maintain his position on track and have a chance at victory. I liked that. It was a decisive move for a driver who increasingly believed he could keep Mercedes behind.

      The safety car deployment did not allow for this strategy to be executed, giving Kimi Antonelli the opportunity for a ‘free’ pit stop and the lead in the race, but we saw that Piastri had the tires and speed to comfortably maintain second place.

      We will never know if Oscar could have won this race without the safety car. After the finish, he was satisfied with second place and being in the fight for the lead.

      McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said at the beginning of the weekend – there is growing confidence within the team that they can still compete for race wins this season, and maybe even for the title. This is the first sign that they are getting to grips with their power unit, which works so well in the Mercedes factory cars.

      But it’s not just about understanding the power unit. Mercedes also has an excellent chassis. McLaren knows they need to achieve more downforce, but they have proven time and again over the last two seasons that they are capable of doing so.

      Racing has changed, and downforce now needs to be created differently, but the correlation between the wind tunnel, CFD computers, and the real track must be high. And in this, McLaren is a world leader. They have an excellent technical group in Woking.

      Reliability remains a concern. Norris had issues in practice, and in qualifying, he lacked speed on the straights. McLaren regrets that they have only completed half of the three Grands Prix this year. But in Japan, they showed significant progress. Remember how two years ago they brought a package of updates to Miami, and it earned Norris his first Grand Prix win.

      Now, with a month until the next race, they need to find some of that magic for the updates we will see when Formula 1 returns. Only then will we know if McLaren can truly compete this year. But what we saw in Japan is encouraging.”