Oscar Piastri was pained at having missed out on an opportunity for his first podium finish in Formula 1 after he was demoted to fourth place in the British Grand Prix during a safety car period.
The McLaren rookie was shadowing teammate Lando Norris throughout the first half of the race at Silverstone, with the pair running second and third to Max Verstappen and with the pace to pull away from Ferrari and Mercedes behind. However, Kevin Magnussen’s retirement came three laps after Piastri had made his pit stop, and with Lewis Hamilton having yet to pit the Mercedes driver was able to jump up to third place.
“Definitely, yep — it hurts to be so close to a podium,” Piastri said. “We were looking so good — we executed everything we could, we were pulling away from the cars behind, all to be one second too far behind pretty much when the SC came out. It hurts a little bit, but I’m so happy that I’m disappointed with P4, as opposed to what it’s been earlier in the season.”
Norris took the lead from Verstappen at the start and Piastri was also able to attack the Red Bull, but says he had his momentum halted because the front row blocked his route towards Turn 1.
“I was pretty excited to be honest, when I got off the line and was like, ‘OK, I’ve got the best start out of everyone here’ and had to find somewhere to go. I ran out of space, but I think the more exciting part was being able to hang onto the back of him for a few laps — and even for the rest of the race it wasn’t like he was stupidly quicker than us. So that was very exciting — to be genuinely the second-quickest team today exceeded all of our expectations.”
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Despite the disappointment of not picking up a trophy, Piastri says the more encouraging aspect is validation that McLaren has improved its race pace after some difficult Sundays earlier this season.
“Still a bit more to come, too,” he said. “I’ve got the new front wing next weekend which Lando had, which is exciting, a couple more other bits, so yeah, nice to know we’re fighting here and we still have a little bit more to come.
“Clearly the upgrade’s a massive step forward — very good step forward over one lap, but the race pace is clearly where we’ve made a massive jump. Going into the race I was maybe slightly cautious we’d hit reverse like we have done recently but if anything it was even stronger than Austria, so that was super exciting.”