Oscar Piastri is fighting for podiums right in his rookie season, something he certainly didn’t dream of after a difficult start to the season. In McLaren, they made huge progress in recent weeks and fought for podium places in Hungary as well. Lando Norris gave another fantastic performance and finished second, but Oscar Piastri couldn’t keep up and crossed the finish line “all the way” in fifth place. The Australian youth was not satisfied after the race.
Piastri drove in second place in the opening stint, taking advantage of a battle between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton to move ahead. McLaren’s strategists had to react to Mercedes’ attack at the first stop, and because of the impending undercut by Lewis Hamilton, they first called Lando Norris to the pits. The Briton got past his teammate and then just kept increasing the lead.
Piastri came to the finish of the race in fifth place with a lead of only 3.2 seconds on George Russell and with a loss of almost 30 seconds on Lando Norris. According to his own words, he paid extra for tire work, which the much more experienced Norris handled more than well.
“The first stint was good, the second and third quite average, in short I lacked pace. At the moment I don’t know exactly what happened, I was just struggling with the tires. So I have a lot to explore in the coming week. I feel like I did a good job in the first stint, but then I struggled a lot in the next two,” he said after the race Oscar Piastri.
“I’m glad I at least kept fifth place because at one point it looked like we were going to drop even deeper. We’ll see what I could have done better. The car is definitely more than fifth, so I need to find out how I can work better with the tires and learn something. I want to do a better job next time,” he added Plates.
For a while it looked as if his own team didn’t help him when he called Lando Norris to the pits in the beginning, but the result speaks for itself and Oscar is therefore not sorry for the decision of the strategists.
“It wasn’t ideal when I got back on the track behind Lando, but it doesn’t really matter when you lose thirty seconds. I think it was about tire management. There was nothing I could do about it or defend myself better. I tried to defend hard against Checo, but two laps later I didn’t even see him.” says the Australian racer.
So I have a lot to explore in terms of tire work, but overall it was a good day for the team, I couldn’t confirm it, but Lando did. It turned out that even in hot conditions and on such a circuit we can stay ahead. If we’d come to this track with the old car we’d probably be a lap slower than we were today, so it’s still a very positive weekend for McLaren.” concluded his Sunday assessment Plates.
2023-07-23 16:14:37
#Piastri #disappointed #manage #tires #Magazine #F1online.sk
