Former championship leader Oscar Piastri’s F1 São Paulo GP struggles continue. Following his very short stint in the Sprint Race, cut short by his Turn 3 spin during Lap 3, the McLaren driver recovered up to a second row start. While he had had a moment in the early stages of Q1, Piastri went on to lead after his first Q3 attempt.
A tough recovery
Piastri discussed how he recovered from his Sprint Race mishap ahead of Qualifying for the F1 São Paulo GP. He went into detail explaining how important having an elastic mentality is in this unfortunate situation.
“I kind of went through it all and kind of assessed what happened, and once I was kind of comfortable with what had happened, then you just go back into qualifying mode. You know, it’s very different to a sprint race or a normal race, so just trying to focus on that.
“Qualifying session itself wasn’t easy, a bit of a bizarre session and weekend with the soft tyres just not working for some reason. To have pretty much zero lap time improvement through Q1, Q2, Q3 is quite weird. So, yeah, just feels like things are not flowing that easily at the moment.”
Personally, the young driver believes his performance was not as impressive as it could have been, especially taking into the account the impressive pole position signed by his teammate Lando Norris.
“I had pretty good confidence in the car yesterday, today felt like it was a bit trickier for everybody and just struggled to get the most out of the car.”
Not a lot of room for improvement tomorrow
The Aussie driver is not feeling great about his podium chances, with his last prized finish coming four races ago in Monza.
“Just try and pass a few cars for you, that’s all I can try and do. Just try and capitalise on any opportunities that come up. And yeah, see what happens.”
He is not incredibly hopeful about podium chances in the upcoming full length race, especially after seeing how difficult it is to overtake in the mixed weather conditions in today’s event.
“We’ll have to wait and see, you know. It did look relatively tough in the sprint. But also it was quite wet offline, which made things tough. I think there’s also a bit of a question on what tyres to use because the soft has not looked great. It’s not been good in qualifying. It’s not looked great in the sprint either. So, I think there’s a bit of a question mark on that too. Maybe that’ll give me some opportunities.”
How did his Turn 3 Sprint accident happen?
Piastri also went into further detail about his brief Sprint Race experience at the F1 São Paulo GP. On Lap 6, the McLaren driver had run over the damp kerb and spun out of the race. Consequently, he was forced to miss out on an important point occasion. The additional top 8 points could have been a great moment to try and close up a bit his at time 9 points gap to winner Norris.
He admits he isn’t sure about the actual dynamic of his crash, considering that he had already taken advantage of that border very shortly before.
“I used a little bit the lap before and, yeah, had no problems with it. Looking back at the lap, I think a couple of the guys ahead also used it and potentially put a bit more water where I went. Probably shouldn’t have been on the curve anyway, but I think it was, the track was in a different state to the lap before as well. Clearly I wasn’t the only one that got caught out by that. So yeah, a combination of a few things, but ultimately, it’s just one of those things.”
Just a tad off
The former Alpine talent’s uncertainty about the situation also arises from the fact that his racing line was just a very small bit off compared to the usual apex. Nevertheless, the magnitude of what followed has definitely marred his racing weekend so far.
“I would say just the normal kind of ramping up, you know. I was a little bit wide, but nothing major and I took the same line as the cars ahead, certainly one of the cars ahead. Unfortunately, the consequences were a lot bigger. I got clearly splashed up by a lot of water when that happened. Again, I probably shouldn’t have been on the curve, but a bit unfortunate that the consequences were so big.”
