Oscar Piastri reveals moment he was ‘in a lot of trouble’ with McLaren strategy call

Oscar Piastri said McLaren were faced with the “toughest decision in motorsport” but avoided criticising the choice not to double stack him and Lando Norris.

Piastri was within half a second of leader Norris in lap 27 as rain began to cover the track but the Australian was the one to be left out and it ultimately cost him a chance of a podium or even something more.

Oscar Piastri avoids blaming McLaren for race-defining mistake

With the rest of the grid pitting for inters, McLaren had the choice of whether to go for a double stack or leave P2 (Piastri) out in the hope he would not lose too much time.

But lose time he did, heading into the pits with Norris just five seconds behind, and the tactical choice sent him down to P6 and out of win contention.

Of that decision, Piastri described it as the “hardest call you’re ever going to have in motor racing” but conceded that it was a “painful” one.

“I would say joint,” he told media including PlanetF1.com of whose decision it was, him or the team. “I think to be honest, that decision in that race is probably the hardest call you’re ever going to have in motor racing.

“You’ve got two cars, one two, 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 is 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 obviously a little bit painful given the gap to Lewis.

“As soon as I went past pit entry [I knew it was the wrong call]. 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.”

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As for how he felt after the call, Piastri admitted frustration and said it was good he did not open the radio but was still aiming for the win.

He added:”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.

“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.”

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