Oscar Piastri struggled to find pace as his fellow championship contenders Max Verstappen and Lando Norris brought home big points at the F1 US GP. The Australian driver finished P5, 29 seconds behind his McLaren teammate in P2, a rare imbalance of performance between the two.
Piastri on his struggle for pace and the status of his MCL39
Lando Norris was able to put up a great fight with Charles Leclerc in the Ferrari throughout the race. This battle ultimately ended with Norris beating out the Monegasque for P2. Piastri, however, never seemed to put any pressure on Lewis Hamilton in his Ferrari that was just up the road.
Piastri was not content to take home some good points and leave it at that. However, the car underneath him did not seem to provide enough speed to gain ground, as he stated in a post-race interview.
“I was trying, certainly trying my best to get any more spots if I could. But [I] just didn’t have the pace to do anything.
“Yeah, you know, I was trying a lot of different things and trying to find some pace, but it was either the same pace or slower. But I tried different things, some things to try and stay on.”
It seemed as though Piastri lacked confidence with grip and the overall balance of the car throughout the race. This lack of confidence held him back from driving on a knife-edge and extracting everything out of the car.
“The balance was quite different to what I expected at the beginning of the race, and I think naturally as the rears went away it kind of came back to me a little bit. But the pace never really came with that kind of balance change.”
This is immensely frustrating for the Australian driver, as there was a general lack in performance this weekend.
“I don’t have any great ideas at the moment. Qualifying was clean from my side, just the pace wasn’t there. Honestly, a pretty similar story in the race.”
Piastri believes that he did everything he could this weekend
The McLaren driver reiterated that there was no X factor this weekend that gave him hope about his results this weekend.
“I’ve not felt particularly comfortable the whole weekend. So definitely some things to try and understand, but I feel like with the pace I had this weekend, I did the most that I could.”
Piastri then attributed some of his lack of pace to the track itself, claiming that it has never been a favourite of his due to the layout of the corners.
“I think this layout is quite interesting, there’s a lot of very high speed corners with a lot of ride content, there’s a lot of very low speed corners, so you need to be good at both ends of the spectrum.
“I think also for me it’s not been a particularly happy hunting ground my whole F1 career. So in some ways I can’t say I’m shocked that this has been a tough weekend, but obviously I’m always hoping for more.”
In 2023, Piastri DNF’d, and in 2024, he finished in P5. Piastri does not favour this track, as seen in his comments post-race. This season’s result has added to his tricky record at COTA. Piastri’s lead has been cut down slightly by the result of the F1 US GP. But the Australian is far from throwing in the towel. Piastri will look to take away maximum points from the F1 Mexican GP next weekend.
