"I think I got a fair shot last year," insists Oscar Piastri as he admits that McLaren's controversial Papaya Rules look set to remain in place.

While the Australian might feel he got a "fair shot", many feel he didn't, and even if he did they feel that the infamous Monza manipulation, affected him and caused the slump that followed.

As a result of a botched pit stop, race leader Lando Norris was left behind his teammate, who was subsequently called on to yield the position. Though he subsequently agreed with the call - at least publicly - at the time he argued strongly against it. It cannot be coincidence that the Australian's slump began almost from that very moment.

Speaking ahead of the crucial Bahrain tests, Piastri admits that he expects the Papaya rules to continue, though he expects changes.

"I think I got a fair shot last year and I'm expecting that to stay exactly the same," he said, ahead of next Monday's official launch. "That's definitely not to say that certain things could have been done better.

"I think that was probably clear for everyone watching," he continued. "But I think for me at no point were there any bad intentions or any times I questioned the intentions of things," he insisted.

"I think things could have been done better, situations could have been handled differently," he admitted. "But that is part of elite sport and part of Formula 1. You're never going to get every decision right, you're never going to make every single person happy. That's part of the unique nature of Formula 1, given it's a team sport with an individual prize at the end as well. I think I got a fair shot last year and we're working on how we can improve things."

In reaction to Andrea Stella's claim that the Papaya Rules ill be "streamlined", Piastri said: "It will look different. We probably caused headaches for ourselves that we didn't need to at points last year. But I think as a general principle and a general way of going racing it does bring a lot of positives with it, and it's just how do we refine that to try and keep it to just positives basically.

"I think there was a lot more made out about it than actually happens, and there was a lot of hypothetical situations and a lot of people that kind of think without knowing the complete inner workings, a lot of things appear differently to how they actually are.

"A lot of the lessons, both positive and, well I don't think it was a negative lesson, but some of them were nice lessons to learn, some of them were tougher lessons to learn. I think in terms of performance, the peaks that I had last year was firstly a nice confidence boost and kind of a statement for myself that when I get things right and maximise my potential that I can be a very strong competitor.

"I think some of the lessons in the back half of the year, especially very different in nature, I think probably a couple of things in Austin and Mexico from a technical point of view and more of a driving point of view that I hadn't been challenged on earlier in the season. So that was probably one lesson to take forward from that. Then just obviously there was a pretty long string of races where it was pretty eventful for lots of different reasons and I think just taking the lessons out of that and how I can manage those things better, how we as a team can manage those things better, that's probably one of the most important lessons from last year for me.

"I feel like I've done a lot of good work to try and learn from that, I think the team has as well, and we'll make some tweaks, some changes to how we go about things from every aspect. Obviously the main one we're thinking about is how we race each other and how we go racing, but even just from a performance standpoint and time management standpoint, I think there's a lot of lessons in various areas, so just constantly evolving and not staying still is probably one of the big lessons from last year."