“We’ll never know”: Penalised Piastri ponders one that got away
Matt Clayton
Monday, 20 May 2024
Oscar Piastri’s joy from qualifying on the front row for his first Grand Prix at Imola was short-lived after he was penalised for impeding, which cost him a podium – or something bigger – on Sunday.
Oscar Piastri couldn’t help but wonder what could have been after finishing fourth in Sunday’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, the McLaren driver left to rue a three-place grid penalty after he’d qualified on the front row next to pole-sitter and race winner Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing) 24 hours earlier.
Piastri produced a brilliant Q3 lap to finish just 0.074secs behind Verstappen in second, but was hit with a three-place penalty for impeding Haas driver Kevin Magnussen in Q1, which demoted him to the third row. Teammate Lando Norris was the beneficiary of Piastri’s pain, elevated to the front row, and the Briton roared home late in the race to finish just seven-tenths of a second behind Verstappen, who won at Imola for the third time running.
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Afterwards, Piastri – who finished one place off the podium for the third time in seven Grands Prix this season – admitted that the qualifying penalty defined his race on a day where McLaren had the pace to make Verstappen sweat.
“I don’t know what Max’s start was like, but I feel like my start was really good,” he said.
“I had to lift to not hit the back of the Ferrari [of Charles Leclerc], so if I had have got that from P2 … who knows?
“Ifs, buts, maybes … we’ll never know. Given how difficult it was to overtake, starting from second would have made a big difference today. When you’re fighting for these positions, small things like that make a massive difference.”
Piastri settled into fifth off the start and spent the opening stint behind Leclerc’s teammate Carlos Sainz, the Australian looking faster but struggling to find a place to overtake. Pitting on lap 23 and undercutting Sainz saw Piastri set off after Leclerc for the final podium place, but he admitted he asked too much of his hard tyres too early in his final 40-lap stint and lost pace the longer it went, finishing six seconds behind the Monegasque driver and 14secs from victory.
“I think there are still some driving style things to keep working on,” he said.
“It’s just so difficult with the tyres. I felt like the first stint was very strong, and then the second stint … honestly, I think the pace was quite good but I pushed hard to undercut Sainz, which worked. Then I saw Charles was right there as well and I pushed hard to go and get him, and as soon as you push a little bit on the tyres they overheat, and it’s game over.
“I think Charles did a similar thing with Lando, he caught up to the back of him and was there for a few laps, and then dropped back more or less the same amount as me. I’ll take the fast starts to the race, but I’ll take some fast ends to the race [too].”
Piastri had never raced at Imola in any category before last weekend, which made the continuation of his Miami pace from the previous race – he looked set to challenge for a podium before contact with Sainz saw him drop to the back of the field in Florida – a silver lining.
“It’s my first weekend racing here but I’ve been here [testing] in an F1 car before, so I wasn’t completely new to the track,” he said of Imola.
“But definitely it’s a tough one to get right. You put a wheel wrong, you’re in the gravel. It’s got big consequences.
“I feel like I’ve built some consistency in the last couple of weekends. Miami was solid even if the result didn’t show, and here has been more or less the same. When you start building some confidence, it goes a long way.”
Oscar’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix by the numbers
- Qualified: 2nd (started 5th after penalty for impeding Magnussen/Haas in Q1)
- Race: 4th
- Fastest lap: 1min 19.907secs (4th), lap 25
- Points this event: 12
- Points this season: 53 (6th in world championship)
