Oscar Piastri would appear to have quite a straightforward relationship with McLaren's 2025 Formula 1 car having avoided any grand acts of self-beration in peaks of struggles like McLaren team-mate Lando Norris, and so far ignored a front suspension tweak that Norris has adopted to seemingly strong effect.
But while Piastri, like Norris, is happy to point to how fast the car is - and so far has used it to slightly better effect than Norris at the midway point of the season - it would be a mistake to think he is completely at ease with it.
Both drivers identified very early on in testing that the MCL39 was fast but tricky. Almost every weekend since has proven that, with Norris and Piastri often leaving a little on the table in qualifying even when the McLaren has been simply faster, and occasionally allowing others to sneak in - usually Max Verstappen, as was the case at Suzuka or Silverstone.
Sometimes Norris has removed himself from the picture completely, like in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Canada. Piastri hasn't done that. And the absence of any real qualifying disaster has been a cornerstone of an extremely consistent season at the front - but he has not been immune to car extremities.
"There's definitely things from just the car set-up and balance point of view that I try to avoid," Piastri told The Race.
"And some things I struggle with more than others on how I like the car to behave.
"But they've always been kind of rectifiable issues if we've had them in a weekend.
"So I think from the car side of things, yes, there are things we have to be a bit careful of. The sometimes unpredictable nature of the car is not always the most pleasant.
"But we've done a very good job of dialing that out. And that was essentially my biggest complaint at the start of the year.
"You always want a car to be more and more and more predictable. There's only a certain limit you can get to that, but that was kind of my biggest complaint originally.
"It is something we still have to be very careful of, but I think as the season's gone on, we've kind of learned a lot more of how much of it is actually fixable and how to fix it."
Armed with a faster car, Piastri's also upped his own game this year, which has been key to taking the lead in the championship. Piastri has four poles in 12 races, been on the podium 10 times, and has not just benefitted from Norris's errors - he has also beaten him in straight fights.
There is clearly a degree of extra comfort on Piastri's side than Norris's, perhaps born from different driving styles and Piastri naturally asking less of the car or not instigating some of its negative traits with less overlap of the brake and steering lock. Combined with generally having great precision in judging the available grip in the braking and entry phase, Piastri might just generally need less feedback through the car than Norris does.
But Piastri also does not believe the way the MCL39 behaves is so different from last year's car - beyond the obvious unpredictability at the very limit.
"This year's car is obviously incredibly quick, and I think we've done a good job of making it easier to extract all of that potential out of it," Piastri said.
"There's still been some difficult sessions or difficult circuits for us to do that. But on the whole, it's been good.
"When you have a quicker car, more often than not it's a better behaved car. And we have considerably made the car firstly quicker, but also more in the direction that I think both of us want, and certainly that I want, in the way it behaves.
"As a racing driver, you're always going to complain about something, and you're always going to run into the laws of physics that stop you getting everything you want. But in broad terms, it does a lot of what I want, within reason.
"So there is that. But in all honesty, I don't think the car is that different from last year in the way it behaves. There are some things that are different, but a lot of it is still the same. A lot of it is dictated by just how the downforce is generated, the tyres that we have.
"You can manipulate that to an extent, but you can only manipulate it. You can't completely change it."
While Piastri has been understated in his minor dissatisfaction with the McLaren, Norris's issues have been so pronounced and obvious that McLaren has worked hard with him and with tweaks to the car to try to resolve them.
When it introduced a revised front suspension geometry at the Canadian Grand Prix, designed to alter the way the front wheels reacted to steering lock being applied and thus give a bit more feedback through the steering wheel to the driver, only Norris adopted it. This was despite it being available to Piastri too, and McLaren insisting it wasn't just to benefit one driver.
Norris is a lot more sensitive to the feedback through the wheel and his hands, describing it as "my most sensitive area".
"There are obviously many other senses that when you're in the car, you try to use and utilise and put them all together, whether it's your vision and just feeling through your body and your legs, your feet," Norris said.
"But always my understanding of where the grip lies comes through my hands and through the steering wheel."
When the new geometry arrived, Norris and McLaren reported a benefit, but Piastri opted to avoid it in Austria. Norris won from pole there - and was clearly faster all weekend - but Piastri still declined the front suspension at Silverstone. He beat Norris in qualifying, although neither driver maximised Q3, and probably would have finished ahead in the race but for a controversial penalty, although again Norris was potentially slightly quicker.
Despite Norris stressing that weekend that he didn't think the front suspension had been transformative, and was more one of many improvements made, the upshot was McLaren openly admitting it would like Piastri to try the new geometry.
Piastri has said there have been conversations and he is open to it - but is still of the opinion it will not be a game-changer. He doesn't see it as a pure upgrade like the ones he was prioritising previously and partly eschewed the new suspension as he didn't want to add another variable while evaluating other more important changes.
"There have been some conversations about it, and I probably will try it at some point," said Piastri.
"Whether I continue to stick with it, I don't know. But in the grand scheme of things, it's a very minor change.
"Directionally, it should help, but the way I looked at it, or still look at it, is that is such a minor thing and we've had some upgrades in the last races, we've had other things to work on.
"While that's not a big deal, I would rather keep it [the front suspension set-up] the same and get as accurate a read I can on the other big things we are changing, and I've not particularly felt the need to go in that direction.
"There are things I would change with the car, but that is not one that's been at the forefront of my complaints.
"I might change at some point. Like I've said a few times, it's not an upgrade. If it was purely a benefit, then I would put it on and not ask any questions.
"But whilst we have some actual upgrades come along, I thought it was just best to have a clean read on those."
