Piastri Warns of the Need to Avoid Mistakes in the Championship Fight
The driver Oscar Piastri has expressed the importance of not repeating weekends like the Azerbaijan Grand Prix if he wants to secure this year’s championship, competing against Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.
Piastri suffered an accident on the first lap of the race in Baku, which ended a streak of 44 consecutive races in which he scored points.
His McLaren teammate, Norris, finished the race in seventh position, reducing the gap in the standings to 25 points. Meanwhile, Verstappen secured his second consecutive victory, closing in on Piastri by 69 points, with seven races remaining.
After losing 35 points to Verstappen in the last two races, Piastri acknowledged that the weekend in Baku served as a reminder of how quickly the situation in the championship can change.
“We don’t want to have weekends like Baku and we know we can’t afford to have weekends like Baku,” Piastri declared.
Oscar Piastri
Piastri’s weekend in Baku began with difficulties in qualifying, where he crashed in Q3 and placed ninth on the starting grid.
A false start delayed him at the end of the group before his accident occurred, trying to overtake at turn 5.
After reflecting on the weekend, Piastri admitted that there were clear lessons to be learned.
“I think the qualifying, the lesson was that on a street circuit, if you push too hard, it will cost you. I think the qualifying was that simple,” he explained.
“I think that for 16 out of 17 weekends what I’ve been doing has worked very well. I think that if I make sure to focus on the things that have gone well, it will continue to be that way. It’s nothing revolutionary, I just attribute it to a few mistakes.”
Piastri stated that he did not dwell on the accidents after the weekend in Baku and that his mind is focused on achieving a better result at this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.
“I think it was relatively easy to move forward. I think that, in a way, as the mistakes were so obvious, you leave each weekend trying to find how you can improve. But there are some weekends, usually the ones that go well, where it’s a bit more difficult to find where it’s possible to improve,” he concluded.
