Although fourth place was by far the best result of his young Formula 1 career, Oscar Piastri was one of the small losers at the Silverstone race, because he was unlucky enough to be denied his first podium finish in the premier class. While team-mate Lando Norris finished second on the podium, Piastri was “only” fourth.
He owed that to unfortunate safety car timing. Lewis Hamilton used the neutralization to pit and snatched third place from the Australian. “He deserved the podium because he drove great,” Zak Brown is a little annoyed at “Sky”, but he is convinced: “He still has a lot of podiums ahead of him.”
And while Brown believes Piastri will quickly get over today’s result as a result, the Australian himself says it hurts to have been so close to a podium. “We looked so good, we did everything right and got away from the cars behind us – all only to end up being a second behind on the safety car.”
“It hurts a bit,” says Piastri. “But I’m happy that I’m disappointed with fourth place – in contrast to how the season has gone so far.”
Because at the start of the season it didn’t look like the MCL60 would be capable of such feats. “No, not at all,” says Piastri. In the first race in Bahrain, Piastri started 18th and retired with a defect. Team-mate Norris didn’t get past 17th place in the race either.
“We were quite inconsistent at the beginning of the season and were very dependent on the track layout, the asphalt and so on,” he says. However, with the upgrade Norris first had at Spielberg, things suddenly worked out. “Especially on Sundays we made a huge step forward and that’s the most exciting thing,” said Piastri.
“Even with the old car, we could be mega for a lap if the conditions were right for us, but then we always went backwards on Sunday,” he says. “But today we were as quick on Sunday as we were on Saturday.”
Formula 1: Piastri attacks Verstappen
Piastri could already see that in the first laps. The two McLaren got off to a great start and were able to attack pole setter Max Verstappen. Norris passed the Red Bull, Piastri had to give up. “It was pretty exciting,” he laughs.
“At the start I noticed that I had the best start of all and then had to find a place where I can go, but then I ran out,” says the McLaren driver. “But what was even more exciting was that I was able to keep up with him for a few laps. And even for the rest of the race he wasn’t ridiculously faster than us,” he says.
“It was really exciting to be the second fastest team on our own today. It exceeded all our expectations,” said Piastri.
At least McLaren has confirmation that Austria wasn’t a one-off outlier, which was a bit of a concern for McLaren. “But if anything, we were even faster this weekend,” he says.
“Kudos to the team for what they’ve done to improve the car and the season. I’m sure there will still be tracks where we’ll struggle a bit. But hopefully that means fighting that we are fighting with Mercedes or Ferrari and not about not finishing last like we were sometimes this season.”
Formula 1: How is McLaren doing in Hungary?
With Hungary, a circuit is coming up in two weeks that is completely different from Spielberg and Silverstone and is often decried as a Mickey Mouse circuit due to its slow character. Since the MCL60 has particularly excelled in the high-speed range, the chances of the upward trend continuing may not be that good.
But Piastri remains cautiously optimistic: “Budapest has some high-speed corners or at least some medium-speed corners, so we’ll see how we do,” he says.
“I think we’ve now proven two weekends in a row that it wasn’t a coincidence. Will we be the second fastest car in Hungary? I don’t know. But I think we can definitely aim for that.”