The driver Oscar Piastri has revealed that McLaren’s team orders at the Italian Grand Prix were still on his mind when he suffered a complicated weekend at the following event in Baku. In Monza, the championship leader at the time, Piastri, was instructed to concede second place to his teammate Lando Norris after having gained the position due to confusion in the pit stops. At the time, Piastri qualified the decision as “fair” and stated that he and McLaren were “aligned” on the decision. Two weeks later, in Azerbaijan, Piastri suffered accidents in both qualifying and the race, resulting in a point-less weekend and triggering a streak that left him 24 points behind Norris with three races to go. Piastri admitted that Monza’s decisions affected him.
Furthermore, Piastri commented on his performance in Baku.Obviously, the previous race was Monza, where I didn’t feel it was a particularly good weekend for my performance and, obviously, what happened with the pit stops happened.
Oscar Piastri
Piastri also mentioned some factors that contributed to his poor performance in Baku.But then, also in Baku, Friday was difficult, things weren’t working, I was pushing too hard, I wasn’t very happy with how I was driving and, ultimately, probably trying to compensate for that a little bit on Saturday.
Oscar Piastri
I think there were a few things in the previous period, let’s say, that maybe weren’t the most helpful and then things that happened over the weekend.
Oscar Piastri
In Italy, Piastri was the first to pit despite not being the leading car, as McLaren feared the threat of Charles Leclerc in fourth place. A slow pit stop delayed Norris and the pair in the fight for the title swapped positions, because Piastri pitted first, not because of the error in the pits. Piastri has not won a race since then. Piastri described the weekend in Baku as his “worst weekend” in racing.We had a problem with the engine in FP1 that somehow destabilized things a bit, and then I wasn’t driving so well. We were on C6 tires [Pirelli’s softest compound] that weekend, which are notoriously difficult to manage. There were many small things that eventually added up.
Oscar Piastri
Ultimately, Baku was the perfect storm of quite a few things.
Oscar Piastri
Obviously, it was a pretty terrible weekend, but I think the amount of learning we had from that weekend, from a technical, emotional point of view…
Oscar Piastri
No holds barred, that was the worst weekend I’ve had in racing, but probably the most useful in some ways. So when you can start looking at things like that, that usually helps you a lot.
Oscar Piastri
[If] you look at some of the names who have had some pretty impactful weekends, or weekends or races or almost unbelievable moments in their careers where things have gone wrong; it happens to anyone.
Oscar Piastri
There isn’t a single person in racing who doesn’t have some kind of disastrous story of how a weekend went wrong for them. Looking at it from that perspective helps a lot, but you still need to learn the things you need to learn from weekends like that.
Oscar Piastri
