Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris discuss on their 1-2 finish in F1 Spanish GP, as Andrea Stella expands on small scare in the middle of the race seeing Max Verstappen’s pace.
It was fairly straightforward F1 Spanish GP for the McLaren pair in the end with a 1-2 finish. Piastri was largely unbothered from the get go, Norris lost to Verstappen and had to get by him which probably cost him the chance to hustle the Australian, but the Brit lacked bit of pace to do hugely.
Piastri was surprised by Verstappen’s choice of three-stops but it didn’t create a large issue. He had to defend on the re-start, but he managed it well in the end to re-stretch points lead over teammate. “It felt mostly under control,” he said to media. “I think I wasn’t really expecting Max to try a three-stop race, and I wasn’t really expecting it to work…well, almost work as well as it did either.
“So there was a bit going on at that point definitely, and just with all the traffic and the blue flags as well, that made the race a bit more interesting than I wanted. But, apart from a few laps trying to get through the blue flags, I felt pretty much in control and could increase my pace when I needed to. So, yeah, it was a really strong race and a strong weekend.
“I think we did a really good job of managing everything in that race: sticking to our plan on strategy, not getting distracted by the three-stop, really good pit stops. Yeah, I think we just did a good job all around. My restart was okay from a time point of view. I’m not sure my rear tyres were very happy. I think I was wheel-spinning in sixth gear. So not the cleanest of restarts, but it was good enough.
“And then just getting used to how much grip there was on low fuel again, it was like being back in qualifying. So that was a bit of an adjustment, but no, very well managed,” summed up Piastri. Teammate Norris echoed the Australian’s sentiments and conceded that he was quicker on the day, as even though he got a chance after safety car, he couldn’t do much about it.
He expanded on losing to Verstappen at the start. “I just remember the lights going up pretty quickly [at the start], and obviously I was a little bit caught out by that,” said Norris to media. “So, yeah. And then I just couldn’t get a slipstream. Yeah, I just… Oscar didn’t give me a slipstream down to Turn 1! And then, it was hard to commit into the braking of 1 and Max got past.
“So it was a long race. I think we knew our pace was going to be strong, so I didn’t need to do anything too risky into Turn 1. But, yeah, I don’t think I lost out in the race. I think Oscar drove a very good race today and had a good day yesterday. And, yeah, I had the pace to go with him, but not enough to try and catch up and put him under threat. We gave it our best shot.
“It’s a long race, anything could have happened at the end. We both got pretty sideways with the Safety Car restart. It was a good fun race, you know, and for us as a team to finish one-two is even better,” summed up Norris. Team boss Stella felt things were mostly under control as well, like his drivers felt. But there was one scare in the middle of the grand prix when Verstappen was going faster.
It did put them on alert but when they realised that it was nothing too serious, they could breathe a sigh of relief. “When we saw Verstappen going we thought it would be on a three-stop and we thought it’s not going to be a problem because we have already overtaken him on track and we should have a decent pace advantage,” said Stella to media. “But the reality is that he was fast.
“He was fast and when we went on the medium tyres in the second stint. We were pushing, controlling the pace and he was catching up very rapidly, more rapidly than we hoped for. So at some stage we even asked our drivers if we should push more and both gave answers like I’m not sure I have much more pace than this. So at that stage we were a little worried that it could have been a situation more open than we thought it would be in the first stint.
“At some stage it would have also been tricky for us because we had Oscar and Lando that were like 2.5 seconds apart or something, so if we needed to cover Verstappen it would have been a bit of a problem with them. But thankfully Verstappen started to tail off a bit, Oscar found quite a lot of pace at the end of the second stint and this allowed us to go through the pitstop sequence in a controlled way.
“So I think well done to the drivers from this respect but well done to our tyre engineers and overall I think this was a good execution of today’s race. I think in a race where you have so much tyre degradation you are always incentivised to pit. They might have run out of soft tyres [on the stop under safety car], I’m not sure.
“I think if you ask the driver like would you like to stay out or pit for a hard, I’m not sure which one he would pick. That’s all I know about this situation but even for us staying on a two-stop gave us definitely a tyre for a safety car. I think going on a three-stop you run out of tyres and I’m not sure if we had another used soft available but a hard tyre at the restart is always going to be a problem,” summed up Stella.
The Italian conceded that Norris lost time and tyres in the first stint in order to try and pass Verstappen, which kind of set his race. He had praise for Piastri, especially seeing the improvement at Barcelona in the 12 months. “Yes, you do have to use your tyres more because you are following and when you are in following aerodynamics reduces,” said Stella.
“So you have to extract from the tyres what you lose from an aerodynamic point of view which could be easily like half a second that you extract more from the tyres. So I think yes more tyre consumption for Lando in the first stint but overall I have to say that the two drivers were in a way quite surprisingly pretty much going in parallel throughout the entire race and I think Oscar has done a really impressive job considering that last year this was one of the most difficult races for him so he’s gone a really long way forward in 12 months.”
Here’s race start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-spanish-grand-prix-verstappen-snatches-p2-from-norris-at-turn-1-as-piastri-leads-on-the-race-start.1833732474981520181
Here’s re-start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-spanish-grand-prix-verstappen-loses-out-to-leclerc-on-the-safety-car-restart.1833740283761479282
Here’s how F1 Spanish GP panned out
