Oscar Piastri managed to win the 2025 F1 Belgian GP after shooting past his team-mate Lando Norris on the opening lap, and from that moment onwards, he never really looked back.
After a long waiting period due to the severe weather that hit the circuit, Piastri made a crucial move on his team-mate and title rival Lando Norris to take the lead down the Kemmel straight after a rolling restart on lap 5.
Piastri was “thinking” about first lap move for a while
Speaking after the race, the McLaren F1 driver admitted that when looking back at the replay, it wasn’t quite as “scary” as it felt in the cockpit, but nonetheless underlined just how comitted he had to be to make it work to take the lead of the Belgian GP:
“I had a good restart in general,” he said. “I was close into the last chicane, had an okay run out of the last chicane and then a good exit out of Turn 1.
“The move through Eau Rouge, I knew it was going to be by far my best opportunity to try and win the race. I’d been thinking about it for a while, put it that way.
“Obviously, in those conditions, it’s a little bit more difficult than if it’s dry. I knew that I had to try and do that. When I watched the onboard back, it didn’t look quite as scary as it felt in the car. I knew that I had to be very committed to pull that off.
“I knew it was going to help me pretty significantly if I did,” he said of his opening lap overtake. “So I had a good run out of Turn 1 and then tried to be as brave as I could through Eau Rouge and was able to stay pretty close.
“After that, the slipstream did the rest for me. I knew that was going to be pretty important for trying to win the race today.”
How he was “nervous” about the prospect of Norris’ hard tyres lasting better
Although the move pretty much set the scene for his eighth F1 victory, Piastri still had to fend off a charging Norris in the final few laps of the Belgian GP. When the switch to slick tyres came around, the Australian got pit priority and stopped first, switching to the medium tyres and immediately going much quicker than Norris in his old intermediates.
In a bid to try and offset the losses (Norris rejoined over seven seconds back after the stop), the Briton decided to take a punt on a set of hard (C1) tyres, two steps harder than the C3s Piastri was running.
Piastri admitted that he was initially “nervous” of the prospect of Norris closing in on better tyres at the end, as the hard tyres started to work pretty early on in the stint, whilst the mediums would only get worse from that point:
“It was a tough race,” said Piastri. “Difficult conditions at the start and then just trying to manage the Inters firstly because it was drying relatively quickly, but you can kill the Inters in a lap or two if you really want around here.
“So that was a bit tricky. And then I felt good on the Mediums for about five laps, and then when I could see that the Hard on Lando [Norris’] car was not worse than the Medium, I was a bit nervous considering we had nearly 25 laps to go at that point.
“So, I had to be a bit careful, but it held on in the end much better than I feared. I had to manage a bit, but nothing special.”
Why he decided for the mediums at that point
When asked if he and his team had considered also taking the hard tyre, Piastri said it was an option even before the race started, but said he’d rather have mediums in the slightly slippery conditions, which would warm-up more easily in the initial phase but would degrade more – and the contrary being true about the hards – which made it a tricky decision with “risks either way“:
“We’d spoken about it [hard tyres] before the race,” he explained. “It was quite a late decision to pit on the lap we did, but there’s risks either way. If I was in Lando’s position, I probably would have done the same thing.
“At that point, it seemed like the safest thing to do was go on the Medium, because the Hard is two steps harder here. You don’t know how it’s going to react in those conditions. If there’s a Safety Car, which often there is in those conditions, then you probably want a Medium, not a Hard.
“There are risks both ways, but ultimately I’m happy with what we did.”
FIA took the right approach in delaying the start
The McLaren F1 driver believes that the FIA took the right approach in delaying the start as much as it did, as he believes that “particularly” around such a dangerous circuit, it’s always better to be more cautious, given the potential for high-speed accidents in blind corners like Eau Rouge:
“I think the past few years, particularly here, we’ve given the FIA feedback that we would much rather be on the safe side than risk anything,” he said. “I think that’s what we did today. If you were to be picky, maybe we could have done one less formation lap. But in the grand scheme of things, if that’s one lap too early, is it worth it? No.
“Also, us three [podium finishers] are the worst people to ask, because we have the least amount of cars in front of us.
“For someone at the back, the first time we tried to start the race, even for myself with just Lando ahead, I couldn’t see a thing. You can only imagine what it’s like for the guys at the back.
“That’s always a tough thing to balance because the guys at the front have an easier time than the guys at the back.”
Piastri leaves the Belgian GP with an even bigger lead in the F1 world championship, now 16 points clear of his team-mate and title rival Lando Norris, with Max Verstappen a whopping 65 points further back.
