The São Paulo Grand Prix was quite a spectacle, but not just the incredible finish we saw, from the very first lap there was plenty of action.
Contact between Hülkenberg, Magnussen and Albon saw a red flag thrown because of barrier repairs that needed to be done.
Among the worst affected was Oscar Piastri, whose rear wing was hit by a tyre. He pitted at the end of the first lap as the car also had floor damage.
“I hit the brakes for Turn 1 and then looked in the mirror. I saw someone’s tyre flying through the air and thought that didn’t look very good. And then yeah, sure enough, got an impact after that.”
Photo: McLaren Racing
However, the accident caused a red flag, so McLaren had the opportunity to fix the Australian’s MCL60 so he could get back out on track. Nevertheless, both Piastri and Ricciardo were a lap behind the rest as the pack came in the pits at the end of lap two, which pretty much ruled out the chance of scoring points.
Despite being able to return to the race, Andrea Stella revealed that it had not been possible to fully repair the car.
“We had damage to the rear wing floor and rear brake duct winglets,” the team principal commented.
“The floor and the wing, we could repair. Unfortunately, the rear brake duct winglet we couldn’t repair. And this meant that Oscar, although he was able to rejoin the race, was still at a significant lap time disadvantage.”
As the race progressed and the McLaren rookie couldn’t get anywhere near the rest of the grid, the question arose: why? Why stay on track, without the possibility of scoring points? Well, Oscar Piastri wanted to learn and gain valuable experience.
The 21-year-old has struggled with tyre degradation in his rookie season and Sunday gave him a great opportunity to experiment on things.
“After Saturday, I had some clear things I wanted to try and improve on and I think I experimented with that a lot, some things successful, some not.
“But it’s very rare, you get an opportunity like that, to try things like that. Of course, I would prefer the opportunity didn’t come up in the first place. But when it’s there, you’ve got to try and capitalise on it with the lack of testing we have. I just tried to stay on the lead lap, and then, apart from that, learn as much as I could. It’s not been the easiest of weekends.”
The youngest driver on the grid conceded that had it not been for his team, he would not have had the opportunity to get those 70 laps under his belt that will serve him well in general and, above all, for next year:
“And thanks to everyone’s incredible effort to get the car back together in 20 minutes, which was not easy at all, I was able to do 70 extra laps that I wouldn’t have done otherwise. So I learned a lot, overall, but also for when I come back next year.”
The poor run had started from Friday, with the Australian qualifying tenth. He spun in turn 2 as conditions started to get worse.
Of course, the bad timing of going out late in the order for the only run of Q3 didn’t help in the slightest, but despite this, the 22-year-old accepted that the execution was not the greatest:
“It’s a shame. Of course, I couldn’t have done anything. But when you qualify in that kind of position, you leave yourself a lot more exposed to things like that.
“Unfortunately, it all starts on Friday. At the same time, I think the saying that luck is yours is very true. For myself and the team, I don’t think we did as well as we should have done on Friday.
“And in some ways, that’s put me in 10th on the grid and left me more at risk to stuff like that happening. So, if I was starting even where Lando [Norris] started or further up the front, I wouldn’t have been in that crash.
“So, you’ve got to try and put yourself in the best position possible. There’s no point blaming bad luck and not reflecting on things you can improve.”
After finishing 14th at Interlagos, (last on the road to 6 DNFs), and heading into the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Piastri sits 9th in the Drivers’ Championship, 24 points ahead of Lance Stroll. McLaren run 4th in the Constructors’ Championship, 21 points ahead of Aston Martin.
