McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella and Oscar Piastri had different opinions regarding the Australian’s decisive final pit stop during Sunday’s Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix.
Piastri found himself in contention for the win having found his way past team-mate Lando Norris at lights out and latterly the Australian made his way into third at the expense of Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc.
The McLaren driver chased the Mercedes duo of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton all the way to the chequered flag as only 1.173s covered the leading trio after 44 laps at Spa-Francorchamps.
A Russell disqualification promoted Piastri to second, but could a costly pit-stop error have cost him the win?
Coming in for his second and final stop on Lap 33 from the lead Piastri overshot his pit box, shunting into his jackman and taking 4.4s before getting away again.
With a typical stop taking roughly two seconds and Piastri finishing less than a second behind eventual winner Hamilton, McLaren’s Team Principal was right to rue the pit-stop error.
“Oscar said immediately in the in-lap on the radio, ‘apologies for the pit stop’, because I think he realised that that would have been a bit costly, because potentially he would have just queued behind Hamilton but he could also have been in condition to attack,” Stella said post-race.
“So I think this one-and-a-half/two-second loss at the pit stop ultimately proved to be relatively costly, and even because then he would have been behind Leclerc earlier with fresher tyres, which means he could have finalised the overtaking more easily.
“We do have to work with drivers in terms of, even in the hot moments, just don’t overcook it at the pit stop position, because it can be very costly. I think we had something similar in Silverstone as well.”
Still, despite committing a similar error to Norris in the British GP in early July, Piastri didn’t see his overshooting of the pit box as a truly decisive moment in his bid for victory in Belgium.
“It wasn’t my finest moment,” Piastri admitted.
“[But] I don’t think it really cost much in the scheme of things.
“I think it meant I probably would have just been stuck behind Lewis and George for another lap or two at the end.
“But, yeah, obviously something I want to tidy up for all the other races.”
Whether you side with Stella or Piastri on the importance of the pit-stop error, the one thing that remains abundantly clear is that McLaren, the much-fancied team for victory at Spa, is a squad in need of fine-tuning its race operation in order to make good on its incredible promise.
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