A disappointed Oscar Piastri found himself coming up short once again in his search for a first Grand Prix victory, finishing P4 around Silverstone, after a botched strategy call left him on a wet track on slick tyres.
Piastri described the situation as painful, as for the second week in a row, victory was in sight for the McLaren driver who was within half of a second of his teammate Lando Norris in the lead before the pit stops on lap 27.
“I would say joint [decision], I think to be honest, that decision in the race is probably the hardest call you’re ever going to have in motor racing.
“You’ve got two cars, 1-2, separated by half a second with rain coming down, I don’t think it gets any harder than that, so I think clearly some things we need to review.
“I think double stacking would have been the better call, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing.
“So I think we just need to see if we had any information that told us that was going to be a better choice. But yeah, obviously a little bit painful given the gap to Lewis.”
Up until that point, the Australian had charged through from fifth place as the McLaren looked to have an advantage in the changing conditions.
“We had a very quick car in all conditions and I think when it started to rain we were flying.”
Piastri overtook Verstappen on lap 17 before an audacious lap 20 saw him overtaking both Mercedes’ as the rain began to intensify.
Once he made his way past the leading Mercedes of Hamilton at Stowe, Piastri started to charge down Norris in front of him before his race changed for the worse on lap 27.
Whilst the rest of the top 6 chose to pit for intermediates, McLaren decided to leave Piastri out an extra lap, not wanting to take the risk of double stacking the cars.
It may have seemed a smart idea at the time, but this was the decision that ultimately ruined his chances of securing his first Grand Prix victory.
His medium tyres not providing the same grip as the other drivers intermediates, losing a whole pit stop gap to Norris, who closed over 13 seconds in the matter of a lap.
“As soon as I went past pit entry [I knew it was a mistake to stay out]. The last couple of corners were very, very tough and I could see on my dash, that Lando was like five seconds behind me when I pitted so I knew I was in a lot of trouble then.
“Obviously frustrated at that point but I knew that there was rain still coming and after the first couple of laps, I could see that the cars ahead had clearly used up their inters a lot in the first couple of laps so I was actually optimistic at that point.
When Piastri eventually emerged back out onto the track, it was in sixth place, six seconds behind Carlos Sainz in P5.
The 21-year-old still managed to fight back to finish in fourth place after McLaren, with Piastri, making use of having an extra set of medium tyres, becoming the fastest car among the top five for the final stint, finishing less than five seconds behind his teammate Norris who came home third.
“But then I kind of hit the same walls as everyone else. I knew we would have more chances later in the race with getting back onto the slicks, the choice of tyres we had.
“So I knew there’d be more opportunities. So I just tried to give ourselves the best chance of still trying to win.”
