Oscar Piastri says F1 Singapore GP was damage limitation from his end after not so well weekend where he was struggling a lot.
After his show in Azerbaijan, McLaren’s Piastri was brought back to the ground when he straightaway had struggles with his car and rhythm to start the F1 Singapore GP weekend. He was on the backfoot not just to Lando Norris, but also some of their rivals.
He only qualified fifth and was quite a bit off Norris’ pace. In the race, he needed a bit of strategic help to get himself towards the podium and thanks to the qualifying disaster for Ferrari, the Australian only had the Mercedes pair to recover from.
With Lewis Hamilton starting on the soft tyre, it made it slightly easier to get him. It was some work to get through George Russell, but as Piastri went long in the first stint, he had enough legs in the second stint to go past him to be third.
But once there, he did not have enough legs to go behind Max Verstappen, as he had to be content with third in a damage limitation situation. “Qualifying, obviously, wasn’t ideal, but the aim was to get onto the podium,” said Piastri. “And I think losing so much time behind the Mercedes in the first thing meant that that was definitely the most we could have done.
“So walking away reasonably happy. Of course, I’d prefer to be sat in the middle. But I think it was a good damage limitation day today. Even through the weekend, I was struggling quite a lot in practice and felt like I made a good step into qualifying. Didn’t execute as well as I needed to.
“But I feel like I’ve learned a lot through the weekend as well. So even if the end result wasn’t exactly what I hoped, I think we’ve done a good job of maximising the points, especially for the team. It’s a massive points haul for us, and I feel like I’ve learned some good lessons for next year as well. All in all, reasonably happy.”
The stretch of the first stint wasn’t as well he would have liked to. Had there been faster cars around, especially the Ferrari pair, it would have been a difficult task for Piastri, but he managed to hang on in the first stint and had good pace then to go for the podium.
“It was difficult for the last few laps of the stint, but until then I could tell that we had a good pace advantage over Mercedes,” continued Piastri. “And Lewis starting on the Soft meant that I was never really going to try and push to get him early on. I knew that the race was going to come to me much later on, and that’s basically what we did.
“So, yeah, when I was in the dirty air behind them, it was tough, as it always is, but I knew that we had a good pace advantage and that the longer we kept going the more opportunities we opened up for ourselves the bigger tyre difference we had. If there was a Safety Car then we could have capitalised on it. So I think we executed it very well. The last few laps, it was trying to yeah get the team to pit me but It was all you know, pretty much under control.”
Here’s Lando Norris, Andrea Stella on fastest lap drama
Here’s how F1 Singapore GP panned out
Here’s drama about McLaren rear wing
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