Oscar Piastri has been left “speechless” after McLaren’s strategy gaffe cost him a probable victory at Formula 1‘s Qatar Grand Prix.
Coming into the 57-lap race on Sunday, Piastri was hoping to make a decisive dent in team-mate Lando Norris’ championship lead.
After winning the Sprint Race on Saturday, the Australian doubled down with pole position for the race.
Leading at the start, however, Nico Hulkenberg’s stricken Sauber after an incident with Pierre Gasly meant the Safety Car was called into action on Lap 7.
This played out perfectly for Verstappen, who had jumped Norris at the start, as he pitted under Safety Car conditions – essentially minimising the pit lane loss.
McLaren, however, opted against pitting its drivers – forcing them to serve two 25-second pit stops owing to the stint limit imposed by Pirelli at the event.
Piastri recovered to second, with Verstappen winning, But despite Norris dropping down to fourth at the chequered flag, he still holds a 16-point lead over Piastri.
“Speechless. I don’t have any words,” Piastri was heard saying over the team radio on the cooldown lap.
Piastri reacts to ‘interesting’ McLaren strategy call
After the race, Verstappen dubbed the Woking-based team’s call an “interesting move”.
“Yeah, I was like, that’s an interesting move. I knew that then, of course, yeah, we had a bit of a gap. But still, you need to keep the tyres alive,” he said.
Piastri himself was pretty miffed about how the race panned out for him, contending that, in hindsight, he should have been called into the pits.
“There was nothing left out there. So I tried my best, but it wasn’t to be tonight, unfortunately,” he expanded.
“I think in hindsight, it’s pretty obvious what we would have done, but I’m sure we’ll discuss it as a team.”
At the Yas Marina Circuit, next weekend, the 24-year-old needs to win the race and hope that Norris cannot muster anything better than a sixth-placed finish.
Naturally, when asked to reflect on his championship prospects, he was pretty downbeat.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s not all bad,” he lamented.
“Obviously, it’s been a really good weekend. The pace has been very strong, but yeah, obviously a little bit tough to swallow at the moment.”
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