Oscar Piastri momentarily inherited second place late on at the 2025 F1 Italian GP after his McLaren team-mate and title rival Lando Norris suffered a slow pit stop in the closing stages and rejoined in third, after holding second for much of the race.
But the McLaren F1 team asked the Australian to give up his second place to his team-mate, which he duly obeyed, despite firstly sending a clear message of discontent on the team radio.
“We said that a slow pit stop was part of racing, so i don’t really get what changed here. But I’ll do it,” he said over the radio at the time.
Piastri’s wish for a “review” going forward after F1 Italian GP
When asked about this after the race, Piastri stated that although it wasn’t an unforeseen situation, it needs to be properly reviewed again in the future, to avoid any sort of confusion over what’s acceptable and what’s not in such a high-stakes championship fight:
“I think the radio call kind of says enough so I’m sure we’ll discuss it again. It’s something that we’ll discuss, we have discussed it before,” he said.
Why Monza swap was a “fair request”
Despite the clear message demanding a detailed review on how these situations will be handled going forward, Piastri acknowledges that the Monza scenario was quite straightforward, as he wasn’t really on Norris’ pace all race long, and had no right to be ahead through an issue outside of Norris’ control, calling it a “fair request” in hindsight:
“But I think today it was a fair request. Lando [Norris] qualified ahead, was ahead the whole race, and lost that spot through no fault of his own.
“I said what I what I had to say on the radio, and once I got the the second request then I’m not gonna go against the team, so I think there’s a lot of people to protect, and a culture to protect outside of just Lando and I, and ultimately that’s a very important thing going forward.”
“If we were fighting very closely for the whole race then you know it’s slightly different, but Lando was ahead by a few seconds the whole race, so there’s no concern for me with that.
“I think we have had discussions about all kinds of scenarios, and I think when you’re in the same team, when there’s things outside a driver’s control, there’s a lot more ways you can rectify things.
“So it is a discussion we’ve had. I’m sure we’ll review it and discuss more, but it wasn’t a situation that hadn’t been discussed before.”
How circumstances helped the swap
The Australian further explained that this doesn’t set a definitive precedent for the future, and that every situation will be analyzed and handled accordingly to the circumstances:
“I think if it’s within your control and there’s no other cars involved, it’s quite simple. But obviously if there’s other cars involved, we’re not going to give away all of those points to other teams for a mistake.
“But when when there’s no cars in between it’s much easier to rectify it. If it had have been more cars in between [us], then no, we wouldn’t have swapped back, because at that point it does just become a very unfortunate [scenario].”
Balance of his McLaren was “not in a great place”
Although the swap at the end grabbed all the headlines, Piastri’s race was action-packed from the very beginning, as the Australian battled with Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari throughout the first few laps, passing and re-passing lap after lap, before finally getting ahead definitively on lap six.
The championship leader believes the time lost behind the Ferrari cost him a better chance of fighting on track with his team-mate and title rival, but was adamant that Max Verstappen’s Red Bull was not in sight at any point:
“Certainly not Max [Verstappen], but I think with Lando potentially,” he said of his time loss behind Leclerc. “Once I got ahead of Charles I was struggling a bit. The balance just was not in a great place.
“I think as the the medium stint went on, we seemed to get stronger and stronger and I felt like I got stronger and stronger too, which was nice.
“But yeah, ultimately just didn’t quite have the pace and I think once you got close to people unless you had a fair bit more pace than them, it was very tough to stay behind.”
Piastri now leads the F1 world championship by 31 points over his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris, with just eight races and three sprints remaining of the 2025 season.
