Oscar Piastri stated that his Dutch GP was just ‘downhill’ last Sunday (23), describing a painful race where he crossed the finish line 32s behind the winner and teammate Lando Norris.
The Australian had the restart after Max Verstappen’s heavy crash in fifth position using the hard compound, finishing third at the end of the first sector after quickly overtaking Charles Leclerc and George Russell.
However, he didn’t stay there long, as he had a slow pit stop with McLaren and was overtaken by the British Mercedes driver – at that moment, he put on another set of hard compounds. Then, in another stop, he finished in sixth place, also behind Lewis Hamilton.
“The idea was to start on the hard tires and go to the end, but it soon became clear that the hard tires weren’t that great, although I don’t think that was the main problem. Obviously, the first slow stop was somewhat painful, as was the pace after it; there were many different strategies, but I don’t think ours was really the problem of our race,” he said.
“The degradation on the first set of hard tires seemed acceptable, and the second set worked well for about five laps, but then I completely lost grip on the front tires; so, there isn’t necessarily a single thing wrong, but that stint with that tire was very complicated,” he continued.
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“Starting fifth [for the restart], I managed to pass on the outside, which was very good as I gained a position; then, George’s power unit engaged reverse on the way to Turn 7 and I gained another position, which was a bonus, but from there things went downhill,” he continued.
“There isn’t a single clear problem. I think, in the first stint, the feeling was reasonable; there was a difficult moment in the middle, but at the end of the stint, the feeling was good. The second stint with the hard tires was okay for the first five laps and then it became a mess. I’m not very sure how the end was. Obviously, when the Ferraris also overtook me, I went over all that rubber debris on the track and accumulated a lot of debris on the tires; unfortunately, this isn’t the first race where the pace just didn’t show up. So, we need to understand why.”
“Lando won the race with a considerable advantage, so I think the car is at a good level. He has been fast in the last two weekends, and I believe these two tracks favor the car; it’s just that, for some reason, I haven’t been able to extract that pace from it,” he concluded.
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