McLaren pair Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri reflect on their brief F1 Austrian GP fight, as Andrea Stella has praise for the Australian after the Turn 4 moment acceptance.
Even though it was only in the first stint but finally there was a battle between the two McLaren drivers in F1 Austrian GP for the lead, as Norris defended from Piastri. The Australian made quick work of Charles Leclerc and got on the tail of his teammate from Lap 1 onward.
The DRS effect helped Piastri to stay on his tail. He even managed to pass Norris, but the Brit took it back soon. There was an ‘ooof’ moment from the Australian at Turn 4 at one stage, which was similar to the Brit’s moment in Canada. Fortunately, the Australian could apply the brakes, with a lock-up.
He acknowledged his mistake after the race, as he was already reminded about the marginal move by his race engineer during the grand prix. Piastri noted why he wanted to try and do something different in terms of pitting late after loosing out to Norris in the first stint. It was backed by Stella too.
It was nothing to loose situation as if not the win, second was certainly secured due to the gap between them and Leclerc. The victory for Norris came at the right moment, especially since Piastri created a large gap, which now sits at 15 points. They both have a good margin over Max Verstappen.
How race panned out –
Norris: “Crossing the line at the end! That was the best bit, but there was plenty of fun along the way, with Oscar, in the first stint especially. Some close moments, some good battles. Just a lot of laps of looking in my mirrors out of Turn 1 and all the way down to Turn 3. Stressful for sure, not the most comfortable position to be in, but it was a good battle between us. And then quite a long race from that point onwards because I never had a lovely gap, and Oscar kept coming at me the next two stints. So, yeah, good fun, but a tricky race, but well managed. [I was pushing hard], especially stint one. I think we got, like, ten laps here, and the gap was already, like, five seconds.
“And I knew what our pit stop window was going to be or was planning to be. And I was like, there’s no chance we’re going make it to the pit stop here. Oscar was pushing too, and I think we knew quite quickly that we weren’t racing the Ferraris behind with a quick race car, and it was kind of eyes forward. But the first stint was difficult just because I couldn’t get my battery up, and it was quite a strategic part of the race. And I was just always vulnerable for those reasons. But as soon as I did the pit stop, I could get the battery back up for the first time, and then I could be a little bit more comfortable.”
Piastri: “Yeah. It made a big difference [to pass Leclerc in Turn 1]. It meant I could stay in DRS from the start, and DRS is very powerful here. So that certainly helped in the battle at the start. That was an important moment of the race, and then it pretty quickly became clear that it was just going to be a fight between us two. That was a key moment.
Fighting Norris/Piastri –
Norris: “I mean, we just had some good battles, and we’ve had a couple in the past. Granted, they probably didn’t last as long as they did today, but no, I think we both knew what to expect from each other. We both want to race hard and race fair. It goes both ways, and of course, kind of have to put Montreal behind us and behind me for sure. It’s something I wish never happened, but it was nice that we could go out and have a good battle and push things to the limits. There were still some close moments, but nothing that would make Andrea or the pit wall sweat too much.”
Piastri: “I mean, again, there have been a few battles in the past, not just last week, but last year and the year before. So, I think we both knew what to expect. It was a tough battle. It was close at some points, probably pushing the limits a bit much from my side once or twice. But we’re fighting for race wins in Formula 1. It’s going to be pretty tough work and pretty hard. I thought it was an entertaining race. After the first stop, maybe we didn’t do the right thing giving Lando some breathing room, but the first 20 laps were pretty intense. So, it was a good battle.”
Stella: “In terms of the battle between our two drivers, first of all I would like to say that I am very proud of how our two drivers raced today. I think that’s pretty much exactly what we want to see as a McLaren Formula One team. We are here to race. We want to give our two drivers the possibility to express their talent, achieve their aspirations, but this needs to be done within the principles and the approach that we have contributed to build together with our drivers. And I think today that’s what happened. There was only one situation in which the two cars ended up a little too close, which was in corner 4, when Oscar locked up and he ended up very close to Lando.
“We gave Oscar this feedback. I don’t know if this went through on television or not. I want to acknowledge and once again say that I am proud of Oscar, because as soon as he crossed the finish line, he opened the radio and he said, ‘sorry for the situation in corner 4, my bad, I know what I have to do’. So I think it’s all very clear. I am so refreshed by how the team reviewed the situation in Canada, which was a benign situation, it was just a misjudgment. And we have come out stronger and even more united from there.”
Fightback after Canada –
Norris: “I mean, it’s certainly, yeah, it’s fulfilling for me. It gives me good confidence. I don’t need to prove any points or prove anything to anyone, honestly. I like to prove things to myself, probably more than anything. So certainly, it’s been a good clean weekend from FP2 onwards. Felt very comfortable and very on top of the car and performed exactly as I want to and as I need to. I just had a clean weekend. That’s what I had. It’s not that I’ve not been able to do it before and the pace has always been there at certain points. It’s just there’s been some different reasons for different things. But certainly, coming in today and yesterday to do the job that I did, I’m pretty happy with.
“But it doesn’t come easily. It doesn’t come just because I’ve turned up this weekend and things are better. I’m working a lot. I’m doing a lot more work than I used to away from the track with the team, on the simulator, with my own team, trying to improve everything that I can, both on and off the track. I think it’s more a positive thing to see a lot of those things paying off immediately. Good step in the right direction. Still need more, so want more. So, we’ll keep working.”
Strategy –
Piastri: “I knew that I was always going to be pitting second in that scenario. For me, it felt like if I couldn’t stay within DRS, then getting back inside one second was going to be very, very tough. So, I kind of wanted to go a bit different and give myself some fresher tyres and hopefully be able to use them at the end of the stint. It didn’t really pan out that way, unfortunately, but that was the thinking at least. We’ll go back and look and see whether that was the right thing to do. In the moment, I was always going to lose some amount of time by pitting a lap later, so I kind of went, why not try something a bit different? I don’t know yet.
“We’ll go back and look through it. Like I said before, I think I was always going to lose time by pitting second. I had past experience of being just stuck outside DRS, and that was a pretty painful place to be in the past. So, I didn’t really want to be there again. In the moment, I thought that giving myself a bit more work to do but with better tyres was going to be an interesting option. With hindsight, yeah, maybe you can say it wasn’t the right call, but there’s a lot of things you can say in hindsight.”
Stella: “The first option is to pit right away, one lap after, the car in the lead. So it means you’re going to be probably a couple of seconds and pretty much with the same tyre age. The other option is to delay the stop so that you build the so-called tyre delta and then once you stop, you’re going to be possibly three, four seconds, but you will have better tyres. And then you will have a closing stint onto the car that stopped before you. In circuits with high tyre degradation like here, normally staying out gives you a benefit. I think today it wasn’t necessarily apparent because we cannot separate how the strategy worked for Oscar from how fast Lando actually was.
“Because I think Lando was actually fast in the second stint with the hard tyres and this didn’t allow Oscar to capitalise on the fact that he had built this tyre delta. Austria is a special track. It’s one of those in which the DRS effect is so powerful that when you don’t have a big difference between the two cars, the car behind stays hooked onto the car ahead. So I think in the first stint that’s what happened, but in the second stint I think Lando, without the pressure of having to defend all the time, he used perhaps just a one-tenth advantage of pace and he made Oscar’s strategy look like it didn’t work out.”
Turn 4 matter –
Piastri: “Yeah. I mean, I thought it was a fair comment. Locking up and missing the back of your team-mate by not a lot is certainly pushing the boundaries. Even if I hadn’t been told anything, I didn’t think it was a wise decision to try that one again. So, yeah, a fair comment and nothing more than that.”
Stella: “I think the fact that Oscar acknowledged and he said that he was sorry for that situation, means that he knew that, especially at that phase of the stint, when your front tyres are quite aged, if you go for that gap, you may be not entirely in control of the car, you may lock up. So I think the issue that I saw there is that the tyres were locked, and if you lock up, you lose control of the car. And we don’t want now the proximity of the two cars being determined by something that we are not fully in control of. So I think that’s our interpretation, which I think coincides with the interpretation of Oscar. And from every situation, we will take the opportunity to review. We do it together, the conversations are always very good and constructive, and we will fine-tune even more for the future.”
Norris, Piastri talking help on radio –
Stella: “I think, in reality, there’s a technical answer to your question, which is about communications. The technical answer is that in the first stint, when Oscar was behind Lando, he was benefiting from DRS, so Lando was constantly under pressure, and he needed to use his battery to keep the position. So then he was recharging the battery in the mid sector and in the final sector, and he was always very, very marginal in keeping his lead. So when you are in this situation in which you manage the battery, and you have to use your tyres to gain enough gap in the corners not to be passed in DRS, you do have to exploit everything that is available in the car and in the power unit management. And you do have to have information coming from your team. In the second stint, the technical bit of the answer is the fact that, like we said before in the question, Lando was having tyres which were slightly older than Oscar.
“And when there is a difference of four or five laps, I don’t remember now exactly, with the degradation level that you have in Austria, this could be equivalent to two-tenths of a second. So effectively, Lando had a car two-tenths of a second slower because of the tyre delta. And he was, once again, trying to seek all the possible opportunities to maximise his pace. So the interactions with the engineers sometimes are just to do with the fact that you have a budget, being in the budget of power unit, the budget of tyres, and you need to use it at your best. There were conversations happening, certainly happening on Oscar’s side as well, but in the first stint it was, in a way, clearer for Oscar what to do.”
Outside this, Piastri had a scare against Franco Colapinto, when he found the Argentine fighting with Yuki Tsunoda as he arrived to lap them. The Argentine made a move on the Japanese driver at Turn 4 but went wide, which allowed the Red Bull driver to come back on him.
As he went to pass him again on the straight, Piastri was just behind and was forced onto the grass by Colapinto, who didn’t him. The Argentine was handed a 5s time penalty. “I just didn’t see him,” he said to media. “He was in my blind spot and I was focused on Tsunoda. I really wanted to get past. I couldn’t see him. I moved quick [as soon as I realised]. Its okay with the penalty].”
Here’s race start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-austrian-grand-prix-norris-leads-as-verstappen-is-knocked-out-on-the-race-start.1836270947058772854
Here’s McLaren pair fighting: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-austrian-grand-prix-norris-and-piastris-thrilling-wheel-to-wheel-fight-for-the-lead.1836276410694438753
Here’s moment from Oscar Piastri: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-austrian-grand-prix-norris-and-piastris-thrilling-wheel-to-wheel-fight-for-the-lead.1836276410694438753
Here’s Franco Colapinto on Oscar Piastri: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-austrian-grand-prix-colapinto-handed-a-penalty-for-forcing-piastri-off-track.1836280442360012482
Here’s how F1 Austrian GP panned out
