McLaren Formula 1 boss Andrea Stella has revealed the damage Oscar Piastri nursed on his car from contact under the Safety Car in China was worth “four-tenths”.
Piastri, who had qualified inside the top five, trailed home in a distant eighth place in the race, over 42 seconds behind team-mate Lando Norris, who claimed second.
The Australian struggled to maintain pace with Norris on his maiden visit to the Shanghai International Circuit, but his hopes had been compromised at the mid-point.
As the cars prepared to return to racing at the end of Lap 27, Lance Stroll failed to brake for the Turn 14 hairpin and shunted Daniel Ricciardo, who then tagged Piastri.
Having struggled with degradation during the first stint, Piastri was then left to limp home with a wounded car and was powerless to prevent Fernando Alonso passing.
Asked how bad the damage was, Piastri said: “Significant, I don’t know how much time it was worth, but looking at the back of the car after the race it was pretty destroyed.
“So, I think it explains quite a lot of the deficit [to Norris]. I think in the first part of the race it was looking okay, lacking a little bit of pace but not too bad.
“And then after the restart just very much literal damage limitation.”
Stella later disclosed that he was impressed that Piastri was able to adapt to the damage at the rear of his car which was equivalent to missing up to four-tenths a lap.
“It was a big loss. Oscar had damage on the diffuser. He lost a significant amount of rear downforce equivalent to I would say four-tenths of a second,” Stella stated.
“So when we heard the numbers, I wasn’t very optimistic that we could have hold positions like Oscar has been able to do.
“So, I think even if his result obviously is less noticeable than Lando’s, I think he did a good job in trying to understand how to drive the car when he lost so much rear downforce.
“The car was very oversteery obviously, because you lose downforce on the rear axle, but he managed to make some adaptations and keep Hamilton behind. So, that’s a strong result.”
McLaren had expressed surprise that Norris managed to beat both Ferraris and split the two Red Bull drivers amid the expectation China would be a tough weekend.
With upgrades scheduled to arrive on the MCL38 at the next round in Miami, Piastri is hopeful that the Woking-based squad can emerge as regular rostrum visitors.
“I mean hopefully it makes the car faster, but yeah it will be interesting to see what we can do,” he added regarding McLaren’s planned developments.
“I mean obviously for Lando to finish second today is a great result for the team and very unexpected, so we need to understand why we seem to be good today.
“So yeah, hopefully it makes the car even quicker and we can start really challenging for podiums regularly.
