Oscar Piastri says one-stop did cross his mind in F1 Belgian GP but didn’t look feasible, as he felt he lost good chunk of time behind Charles Leclerc.
After Lando Norris had his moment in the opening lap of F1 Belgian GP, the onus shifted on Piastri to deliver for McLaren as he was the only one who could have won the race for them against the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Sergio Perez and Leclerc.
And he was right in the mix as well. Having passed Perez, he brought himself in the Top 3 and it was then to tackle Hamilton and Leclerc. While getting the Monegasque seemed possible, getting hold of the Brit would have required stretched legs.
But George Russell came out of syllabus for him after his one-stop caught out everyone around him. Despite the fresher tyres in the end, it was not enough against lower rate of degradation. Thanks to Russell’s disqualification that Piastri ended up second.
He did think that a win was on the cards. En-route second, Piastri admits that one-stop did cross his mind but he felt it was not feasible. “I mean, pretty happy on the whole,” said Paistri. “I think it was a really well executed race. I think, yeah, clearly the one-stop was a possibility and I think probably there’s a lot of people out there kicking themselves that they didn’t consider it more.
“It did cross my mind, but not seriously enough. I was amazed at how much difference the dirty air made. I think when Lewis and Charles pitted for the second stop, I think I went like one second faster just because I had clean air. So that was impressive, but then it felt like it kind of degged a little bit again after that point.
“And with 16 laps, I think it was, or 15 laps around Spa, it felt like a pretty big risk to try and go to the end. And I knew that even with the tyre advantage that we were building up, that we had a strong chance to try and win the race anyway that way. So yeah, maybe we should have considered the one-stop a little bit more.
“But I think with the two-stop, I think we did a good job of capitalising on it. Just unfortunately, on my side, didn’t give us the track position in qualifying. Overall, I think we executed a great race, had a quick car and, you know, ultimately just didn’t put it in the right position in qualifying yesterday. So, yeah, I think given where we started, very happy.
“But yeah, ultimately, I think there was a bit more potential this weekend,” summed up Piatsri, who also missed his mark in the pit box to push his front jackman away. He was seen holding his neck as the other teammate joked around him. That was the other blip the Australian reckoned he had, in otherwise, his one of the best outings.
There was agreement that he lost ground to Mercedes when he got stuck behind Leclerc for a bit too long. “I would say so [that it was one of my best outings], but I’m not sure my front jack man agrees, but no, I think it was a really strong race,” said Piastri. As I said, I think to try and get past Charles was not easy.
“And I think if I didn’t manage to do it on that lap, I probably would have been stuck there for a long time. So that was a pretty pivotal moment of the race. I think just the pace was very strong. So I felt very, very good this weekend. Even on Friday, the pace looked really strong. You know, just kicking myself a little bit that I didn’t get qualifying right.
“But yeah, I think it was a very strong, strong weekend and probably one of my one of my better races,” summed up Piastri. On the team side, Andrea Stella explained the thought process regarding the Australian’s strategy and how they went about it.
The one-stop did surprise them and it was something that they couldn’t envisage. “In terms of could we, yes, in hindsight, we considered that,” said Stella. “We were not adamant that it was going to work. In case this kind of strategy doesn’t work, it can become very, very painful because then it’s too late to pit and therefore you may lose a lot of positions.
“So this one was pretty extreme I think, in terms of considering this. Because if you commit to this and it doesn’t work, you can probably screw up a race day. With Oscar, we thought we had strong pace and we were in condition to use a more conventional two-stop to recover positions.
“The two factors that today were different from our initial expectations were the degradation on the tyres was lower than expected, but if anything and above all, overtaking was more difficult. That surprised us, and when you had a bit of a tyre advantage, just it was still not enough to overtake because, like we saw with Lewis and Russell, I don’t think the positions were frozen, that’s why I understood.
“It’s simply that with the effect of the dirty air, it was just not possible to overtake as easily as we thought. So in Russell’s position, there was potentially more motivation to take a risky approach. Like if it doesn’t work… But for us, we want to think slightly more robustly and we see, we scored again higher than Red Bull.
“We are now 43 points behind. We need to be a little cautious with adventurous strategies, which in hindsight actually proved to be good,” summed up Stella, who kind of concurred with Piastri about losing time on the pit stop and behind Leclerc.
“Like Oscar said that immediately in the in-lap on the radio, apologies for the pitstop, because I think he realises that that could have been a bit costly,” he said. “Because potentially, he would have just queued behind Hamilton, but he could have also been in condition to attack.
“This 1.5-2s loss at the pit stop ultimately proved to be relatively costly. And even because then you would have been behind Leclerc earlier with fresher tyres, which means you could have finalised the overtaking more easily. A bit of a cascade. We do have to work with drivers in terms of like even in the hot moments, just don’t overcook it at the pitstop position because it can be very costly, he had something similar in Silverstone as well.”
Here’s pit stop moment: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-belgian-grand-prix-piastri-misses-his-marks-on-last-pit-stop.1805832653775995039
Here’s Oscar Piastri moving upwards: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-belgian-grand-prix-piastri-passes-russell-and-perez-in-two-laps.1805830500552428177
Here’s Oscar Piastri passing Charles Leclerc: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-belgian-grand-prix-piastri-pulls-off-brilliant-move-to-pass-leclerc-for-p3.1805832574596919780
Here’s Max Verstappen on keeping Lando Norris behind
Here’s how F1 Belgian GP panned out
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