Oscar Piastri reckoned McLaren were not at it in F1 US GP in terms of pace, as he views on stewards decisions, while Sergio Perez confused on pace loss.
It was not the weekend for McLaren in F1 US GP. They looked to be behind from the get go and it remained like that, even though Lando Norris showed better pace when compared to Piastri. The Australian was knocked out in SQ1 in sprint qualifying and couldn’t score in the sprint then after despite a sound recovery drive.
He was also handed a penalty for barging through Pierre Gasly, which he or the team didn’t agreed upon. For the race, he was mostly stuck in fifth and had a lonely run behind the Top 4. He closed up towards the end, but with the penalty to Norris, he was asked to slow down on the last lap.
“It has not been straightforward, yeah, my Sunday was lot more positive than sprint, my pace relative to Lando at least, was pretty similar for a lot of it,” said Piastri to media. “Obviously, it was only fifth, the result is not what we want. To be honest, it is not a complete surprise where we ended up, where Ferrari ended up.
“I think Lando made us look a bit more competitive than we were in sprint, so fourth and fifth is not completely unexpected. The car has been very tricky all-weekend. Over one-lap it had potential to be quick but trying to unlock the pace has been incredibly tough, and then in the race, you can’t get away with the same things that you get over lap and the true pace kind of shows itself a lot more.
“I hope this is our weakest in the last six, we obviously had some good races at the track coming up last year, we had some bad races [as well] coming up, so I think in general we should be a bit more competitive but certainly not expecting Ferrari to be out of the picture for the rest of the year.
“They have gone a little bit under the radar in the last few races, Monza they were obviously quick, Baku, it was very-very tough to hold them back and in Singapore, they had a poor qualifying otherwise they would have been very-very competitive, and this weekend is the same.
“This is not completely unexpected result but we need to make sure that we do well in the next,” summed up Piastri, who at that time only gave a brief view on the fight between Norris and Verstappen. He rather showed displeasure on his penalty, while adding on what the racing guidebook states.
“I’ve seen it briefly,” started Piastri. “I mean, it’s not really that much for me to comment on. The only thing I would say is both cars went off the track, so I feel like it’s a bit difficult to give a penalty for both guys going off the track. I don’t know what happened at Turn 1 either. It looked pretty dicey.
“I mean, I think if you look at my penalty from the sprint, it was basically a carbon copy of Max and Lando, but I stayed on the track and I got the penalty. So, no it is not very clear. I feel like as drivers, we also all kind of have different interpretations of what we think is fair and what’s not, especially when it comes to being on the outside of another driver.
“But the difference of 10 centimetres or 20 centimetres shouldn’t be the difference of you having the right to space or not having the right to space. And obviously, for stewards who have generally not driven a car very much, it’s very tough to judge that in the moment especially.
“So, yeah, I think my incident yesterday and Lando and Max’s today looked very similar with the opposite penalties. So I’m sure we’ll have some questions,” summed up Piastri. While the Australian had his struggles, it was similar for Red Bull’s Perez too who was only seventh in the end.
He started from 10th and could only manage to gain few places, where he was even overtaken by Mercedes’ George Russell, who started from the pitlane. The Mexican did not run the updated floor as Verstappen and reckoned that the pace gap was too much than they anticipated.
He is not sure if he will get it in Mexico as the team is still understanding the updates. But overall, Perez was disappointed with the pace in the race. “I think we lost quite a lot in the middle of the race, getting stuck behind the midfield and then towards the end of the race, again with Franco, we did lose a couple of seconds there and that were very costly in the end,” he said.
“But generally speaking, we lacked some pace in this weekend. I think it is something that we have to go and work together with the team to understand where the pace has gone and yeah, really try to figure out the differences on the floor, it was probably bigger than we thought, and yeah, we will see in Mexico, what happens.
“The main difference comes in high speed and braking. It seems to be more load than we initially predicted, so yeah, that was the biggest thing and a bit of overweight as well. We don’t know yet [about getting the update in Mexico], we are learning about this floor, we might take an opportunity to bring a new spec later on, so we will see. I think in the coming races, we will know more.”
Here’s Red Bull, McLaren on their US GP fight
Here’s how F1 US GP panned out
Here’s how F1 US GP sprint panned out
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