Oscar Piastri, who had the race win at the palm of his hands for the first 38 laps after a bold overtake round the outside on his teammate Norris who started on pole at turn 4 on lap 1, looked like he was going to achieve his second win in Formula One.
However with the severe tyre graining on both the McLarens, they opted for the 2 stop strategy which opened the door for Charles Leclerc. The Australian pitted on Lap 39 for a second time to fall to P3. Ferrari went 1-2 at that point.
Piastri managed to get past Sainz with ease, lapping 2 seconds faster than him after the pit stop. Leclerc, who managed his tyres, started pushing during the final few laps. Despite the driver from Melbourne lapping faster than the Monegasque, he came up short.
Piastri talked about the disappointing P2 finish afterwards.
“I’m not going to lie, it hurts a lot. We did a lot of things right today. There was a lot of question marks on the strategy going into the race.
“From the position we were in with the tyres looking like they did, doing a one-stop seemed like a very risky call, but in the end it was right. Very, very happy with the pace, with the race that I managed to achieve, just when you finish second it hurts.”
The McLaren driver then talked about how it was a gamble to choose the one-stopper or a two-stopper at that point in the race and Leclerc just chose the right one.
“In hindsight yes, but everyone’s a legend on Monday after the race or the chequered flag. Today, unfortunately we got it a bit wrong, myself being a big part of that.
“Charles [Leclerc] could try something a bit different as he was going to finish third either way and picked the right gamble today. The mediums were getting destroyed and even the hards on the Red Bull at the start looked pretty dead. My front left was pretty heavily grained, just we didn’t expect it to clear back up again, which it did.”
With the fresher tyre advantage to Leclerc, Piastri added that it was possible to catch him even if it was a tough one but there were circumstances where Lance Stroll failed to comply properly to blue flags — in his opinion — that caused him to lose time.
“I thought [catching Leclerc] would be tough but I thought it would be possible,” he added. “With the pace I had at the start, I think I was catching him at two seconds a lap.
“Had a few people that weren’t very helpful – Stroll was driving like he was in his first go-kart race, so that cost a couple of seconds. Just a bit painful, but I think we pretty much needed everything to go right on that last set of hards and it just ultimately wasn’t quite enough.”
