For the first time since both McLarens got disqualified at the F1 Las Vegas GP, Oscar Piastri has spoken about it in a print media session in Qatar. The Australian had finished P4 in the race, before he lost those 12 points.
Oscar Piastri knew McLaren were facing big problems before leaving the circuit
It quickly became clear McLaren faced a disqualification from the Las Vegas as their cars were not released from scrutineering in a timing window like they normally would. Once the FIA document came through about it getting passed to the stewards, the inevitable result came. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were thrown out of the final results.
Although he knew they were in trouble before leaving the circuit, Oscar Piastri revealed at the F1 Qatar GP that he found out at the airport they lost P2 and P4.
“I knew we were in trouble when we were at the circuit, being called to the stewards, I was still at the circuit.
“And when you get called to the stewards for anything, but especially something like that, we tried to be optimistic, but there’s only a certain amount of optimism you can have.
“So I knew we were not in great shape at that point, but yeah I officially found out when I was at the airport.”
Oscar Piastri did not realise how much trouble he was in during the F1 Las Vegas GP
As Andrea Stella admitted earlier Thursday, McLaren worked out that things were not looking good with Lando Norris from an early stage last Saturday. However, a sensor fail on Oscar Piastri’s MCL39 at the start of the Grand Prix left the team in the dark with the Aussie’s car.
While he was not especially aware of the potential trouble facing them post-race during it, the 24-year-old Australian conceded his car had a lot of porpoising during the 50-lap contest. His car was sparking massively as he overtook Isack Hadjar, for example.
“Not necessarily, we had a lot of porpoising in the race, which ultimately is the main reason for being illegal on skidwear, I did feel that.
“But there’s been certain races through my career where sometimes you feel like you have a lot of grounding and not that much skidwear, sometimes it feels like you don’t have much and you know you’re wearing through them like crazy, so it depends a little bit from circuit to circuit, but definitely it was not the most comfortable of races in the car.
“But yeah, I didn’t realise the extent of how bad it was for skidwear on my car, we had a sensor fail at the start of the race, so we didn’t know exactly how bad it was, but yeah, it’s difficult to tell normally.”
No big risks taken on ride height heading into the F1 Las Vegas GP says Oscar Piastri
Ever since McLaren pummeled the field on pace at the Dutch GP in Zandvoort back on the final day of August, Red Bull and Max Verstappen have become an increasing headache, with Mercedes joining in at times, and Ferrari on the odd occasion. It means nailing the ride height and getting the maximum performance out of their car has been key.
Unfortunately for McLaren and their drivers, it all went wrong in Las Vegas with the porpoising, joining Lewis Hamilton (China) and Nico Hülkenberg (Bahrain) in getting disqualified from a race for excessive skid/plank wear.
Something that did not help McLaren was the fact FP2 was wet, with FP3 a mix of conditions. A strange run plan to send their cars out too early on softs as it started to dry in final practice left both drivers in the pits at the end when the track was at its driest. Alongside that, more learning about getting the ride height correct for Sunday was lost.
Nonetheless, Piastri believes McLaren had played it safe heading into qualifying and the race. Norris’ words that he was porpoising after qualifying was a prelude of things to come, however.
“Not necessarily, I mean you try and get the most out of the ride heights everywhere you can, it’s pretty much the main way you gain performance in these cars, getting them in the right window.
“Vegas especially, a lot of long straights and then slow corners means you’ve got quite a big difference in ride heights between the different speed ranges, so it is important in Vegas.
“But we had kind of no concerns of anything, you know we obviously didn’t get that much practice in in the end, we had FP1 but then you know we did two laps in FP2 and then FP3 was kind of damp still, so it wasn’t the easiest to get a read, but obviously that’s the same for everybody.
“What we didn’t expect was how much porpoising we had in the race, it wasn’t like we took extra risk, we actually played it safe given we hadn’t had that much practice, but there was just things that happened that we didn’t expect.”
Heading into the F1 Qatar GP, Oscar Piastri trails Lando Norris by 24 points. He is tied on 366 with Max Verstappen.
